How We Learned to Lie

by Meredith Miller

  “I thought we could transform when we got to high school. Don’t you ever want to just pretend we live in some dog-food-commercial world where all the lawns are perfect and no one ever dies?”

  “No. I have a different utopia.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “There are no lawns, and no lawn mowers. This house is just the attic on stilts. No kitchen or living rooms or bedrooms. Our boat is big enough to live in. We spend all summer in the middle of the Sound. There are cuttlefish in North American waters, just so you can look at one up close. Electricity is free. You never die.”

  He didn’t mean “you” like the generic you, like people. He meant me, personally. The car pulled up while I was still trying to figure out what to say to that. I looked down and there was a lady with piled-up red hair and a pantsuit covered in big flowers. Ten years earlier, she would have been in a magazine. Seemed like she’d been hiding somewhere without magazines and television for about a decade.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  Daisy looked down and said, “Shit.”

  The lady put her handbag over one arm and shut the car door. When she opened the McNamaras’ front door without knocking, I realized she must be family.

  “Helloooooo . . . ? Anthony Daisy McNamara! Come and give me a kiss.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “It Regina. My mother’s sister. Why is she here?”

  I knew right away. It was Arthur’s fault. I found out later it was Gramps who called her, but Arthur is the one who told on us.

  No Spark and No Wave

  Daisy

  IT WAS PRETTY much impossible to make phone trips while Aunt Regina was in the house. But I needed to know one more thing. Not for me, for Arthur. I needed to know what had happened to Officer Kemp.

  I had to cut school and physically tap into the phone line behind the cop shop. Eighteen months ago, I would have found something like that too terrifying to even contemplate. Right then it was the least I could do. The telephone line went up through the woods so at least no one could see me. I took Aunt Regina’s tuna-fish sandwiches in a brown bag, said goodbye at the front door, and then went straight around back and through the woods.

  I found out you could be in those woods all day and never run into anyone. I sat on a branch, leaning against the trunk of a maple tree, and read Stranger in a Strange Land while I listened to the Highbone Station phone.

  Arthur stayed away for three days, with his girlfriend Shirley, I guess. As soon as I saw his car, I told Aunt Regina that Mr. Jensen had invited me over for dinner. She loved Joan’s Gramps because he was the one who ratted us out, him and Arthur. Yeah, I know. They meant well.

  I went around to Arthur’s window and chucked a pebble. The tide was in, and there were only a couple feet of ground for me to stand on. He stuck his head out and held up a finger. After a couple minutes he came out the back door with his tam on, pulling on his flak jacket.

  “I get that you’re mad at me, Daisy.” He handed me a Marlboro and sat down on the bottom step.

  “You know what? I’m not.”

  “I have to watch out for my sister. I like you, though. You’re a good kid in a messed-up situation is all.”

  “I know. I wanted to tell you, Officer Kemp is gonna be okay.”

  “You don’t know that, Little McNamara.”

  “No, I do. I listened in to their phone.”

  “Whose phone? What are you messed up in now?”

  “The cops, at the station. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry. He doesn’t remember why he was speeding on Jensen Road. He said he was chasing somebody, but he doesn’t remember who.”

  Arthur’s hand was shaking and his eyes were full of water. I realized he’d spent the last week thinking he’d killed somebody. And it was my fault. If not for me, Joan wouldn’t have even been there. Joan insisted on following me that night, and I called Arthur so he’d know. I was trying to keep my promise.

  “Seriously, Arthur. The cop’s fine, but they don’t believe him. They think he was on the take and didn’t call in on purpose.”

  “So, he’s not okay, then.”

  “Why should he be okay, Arthur?”

  I didn’t say anything more than that, but we were both thinking about Joan.

  “I’m sorry about your brother.” Arthur put a hand on my shoulder. “For real.”

  “Yeah, everybody’s sorry, but nobody’s surprised, right?”

  The whole story was coming out, or as much of it as we’d ever know. Aunt Regina was doing loads of paperwork and answering questions in the living room about twice a day. It turned out they did want to know about Robbie. He just wasn’t a priority the day they arrested Scottie because he was already dead. Robbie had been trying to be some kind of kingpin, but in his usual messed-up way. He’d been fronting stuff to Scottie, and Scottie had some kids dealing for him at school.

  “Daisy, I think it’s time someone talked to you straight.” Arthur put his cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and laid the butt on the step next to him.

  “I know. I get it. It just took me a while.”

  “If Joan was your sister, would you want her around all that?”

  “She isn’t my sister, but that doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit. I hardly have any memories without her in them. If I’m away from her for too long I feel dizzy and can’t figure stuff out.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to. You both are.”

  Which is why I went with Aunt Regina and didn’t fight. I knew Arthur was right. I’d been a coward my whole life. Letting go of Joan was like crumpling up my whole earth and sky and throwing it all away, but it was my one chance to get it right. To do something for her. Being in a world without her was like learning to breathe water, except I hadn’t been practicing as long as Joan, and I didn’t want to breathe anymore anyway.

  It was Arthur who found a boat to take us out into the Sound with Robbie’s ashes. Joan came and Aunt Regina invited Mr. Jensen. The fisherman, Danny Pavlich, said something respectful and then stayed by the engine house to give us our space. The four of us sat on the benches, me across from Joan and her with her head turned away from me, squinting at Connecticut.

  It was the Saturday before finals. All our studying was as done as it could be. I don’t know about Joan, but my head couldn’t hold anything anyway. My whole body was so empty I could hear the whoosh of blood my veins, echoing against my bones. I kept having to ask people to repeat things because I couldn’t seem to listen anymore.

  When Regina said some words about Robbie, they just tangled up into a ball of sound and fell past me into the water. Then it was my turn. I said something about the way it felt when he put his arm around me, how he was taller and bigger than me, how I could still hear his voice, but it was only in my head, about the day he tried to clean out the empty gutters. I honestly don’t remember. People laughed little sad laughs and smiled at me, so it must have been okay.

  The wind was blowing onshore, so Aunt Regina didn’t open the urn until Danny had taken us out around Head of the Harbor and pointed the boat back toward home. Then she shook it and Robbie’s dust came out, ground so fine we must have breathed some in. Most of it went out over the prow, looking like the smoke from a beach fire. A few pieces of Robbie were heavy enough to plink down into the water and sink.

  Joan didn’t say much and Mr. Jensen didn’t either. But I was glad they were there, and I knew they didn’t have to be.

  When we got back to the floating dock, Danny helped Aunt Regina out first. I got out last. The boat was light and it pitched under me.

  “I liked your brother.”

  Danny said it so quietly no one heard him but me. I looked up into his eyes and they weren’t pitying or sad. He was just seeing me, and telling the truth. I memorized that look because I wanted to practice it for the rest of my life.

  “I knew him,” Danny said. “Before, you know. He was smart, and he liked Doris Bromley. She was in my grade and she never
even noticed him.” Danny smiled. “He followed her around like a puppy.”

  “No way.” I laughed and it felt good.

  “Way,” Danny coiled the rope and dropped it on the dock.

  Aunt Regina was standing at the end of Main Street, looking down Jensen Road. I caught the hopeful look before she could hide it. She was waiting, too. We were both expecting my mother to show up any second. She’d bring her lips and her nails and her trench coat, her sparkling copper Chevy and her chiffon scarf. She’d bring everything but her eyes. We’d look into her black glasses and she’d hold her hands out to me, whispering, “best boy.” It just seemed impossible, no matter where she was, that she wouldn’t feel the moment when we were tossing away the oxidized reduction of her own son.

  Joan

  IT WAS GOOD to have a bunch of stuff that was too intense to tell Nick. The way he slid his eyes away from mine hollowed me out. All that secret information gave me leverage, something to fill me up when he wouldn’t look at me. When classes were over and finals started, he invited me to his house again. He even drove me. I felt at least five years older than last time.

  “Well, how have things been?” He was opening a carton of shrimp fried rice and two beers we got on the way.

  “Things have been intense, actually.”

  “I know. It’s been a terrible year. You don’t think stuff like that can happen in your own town, do you? It always seems to happen somewhere else.” He was talking about Ray Velker. “But you’re okay, and you’re going to Woods Hole. I’m really glad.”

  He sounded like I was a job he’d done right.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Not maybe, Joan. It’s done. You need to go.”

  “Stop talking with your mouth full.”

  Nick knew how to use chopsticks and I wondered why. I knew too, because Andre had made us all learn, but I used one of Nick’s three forks anyway.

  “Daisy’s aunt is living with him. It sucks because we can’t really hang out at his house anymore.”

  “Daisy? Who’s she?”

  “Not she; Daisy is my best friend.”

  “Oh, Anthony. Apparently, he’s some kind of engineering genius, according to Mark Nadel. So, you’re both geniuses. If you stay friends, you two could win a Nobel Prize one day. You might change the world.”

  What world? Ours? Or the whole big one everybody’s in together? How big does your world have to be before you’re allowed to talk about changing it?

  The first time, I didn’t even think about getting pregnant. There was so much else to worry about. This time I did, but I didn’t know how to say anything. I guess that’s part of your best friend being a guy, part of what wasn’t there between me and Daisy. If Daisy were a girl, we would have run into a bathroom stall, out of breath and whispering about doing it standing up or pulling out early or how Kathy Outhewaite managed to make the quarterback wear a condom. Because even I heard that, from behind the television in the commons. When it came down to it, I said nothing and then lay there being terrified. I stayed terrified for a month.

  Nick still had the same three shirts hanging from his coat hook. I looked around at the room, trying to decipher all the presences and absences. I was trying to calculate what had happened in there since January. All right, yeah, whether other girls had been there and what it meant that I was there again.

  There were some jeans over the back of the desk chair and the abalone-shell ashtray was clean. There were clean dishes in the drain board, too. Did he do all that?

  “I do like you, Joan.” It was almost like an answer.

  “I don’t want to leave Highbone.”

  “I mean, I’m not an asshole. I like you.”

  “Woods Hole is really far away.”

  “But you need to go. You’re gonna have a whole life and it’s gonna be great. You can do anything.”

  “That’s bullshit.” It just came out before I could stop it.

  “No, it isn’t. You can believe me. I’m older than you.”

  I wanted to tell him everything, so he would know I wasn’t little or quaint or remotely pointless. But they weren’t my secrets. I wanted to show him the scar on my hand and tell him I wasn’t helpless. I didn’t say any of it.

  I spent the next month worrying, checking my underwear all the time and imagining I had cramps. Teresa went to Planned Parenthood with me and they put me on the pill. Then I had a splitting headache every single day so I stopped taking them. Anyway, by that point it didn’t matter anymore. I was preparing for nothing because that was pretty much the last time I saw Nick Tomaszewski alone. I didn’t get a phone call. No rides home, no invitations, and no sex.

  After we scattered Robbie’s ashes, I spent two whole days studying for the biology final and didn’t call Daisy the whole time. I guess I wanted a good grade to tell them about at the summer program. And Aunt Regina was keeping him pretty close. I was already picturing all the ways I was going to be alone up at Woods Hole. On the beach without Daisy, in bed without Nick, sitting at a breakfast table surrounded by white people. I hadn’t told Daisy I was going yet.

  It was after finals were over that Andre put his head in my bedroom door and said, “Phone.” I had to think for a minute to remember what that meant.

  “Joan?” Daisy’s voice was buried underneath a lot of hissing.

  “Where are you? You sound weird.”

  “I’m in a phone booth. I need to tell you something.”

  “A phone booth where? Siberia?”

  “Never mind. I . . . um . . . I’m not gonna see you for a while. I left something under the bench.”

  There were other people, talking on the line.

  “I can hardly hear you. Are you okay?”

  “Kind of. I’m in Queens.”

  “You went to Queens for a phone booth to call across the street? You are such a moron.”

  “No. Joan, I’m staying here for a while. With Regina. Just look in the bench, okay?”

  That wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to leave Daisy, and he was supposed to hang around messing with the phones and mooning out the attic window until I came back and we did eleventh grade.

  “I’m going to Woods Hole,” I said.

  “I know. I’m glad. I have to hang up now, but I left you something cool. Go look.”

  “Daisy!”

  “What?”

  “I—don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  He had put the stuff inside a Drum tobacco tin then in a ziplock bag, and taped the whole thing under our bench.

  There was a battery with a wire and a little red lightbulb attached to it, and a note. The note said, Call this number Saturday nights at 7:40, then there was a 718 number. He’d written, DO IT FROM A PHONE BOOTH and underlined it twice. On the back of the note it said, It’s an earring. Put the battery in your shirt pocket.

  I went in my room and tried on the earring. The little bulb had a curved wire that went through my ear, and when I clipped the contacts onto the battery, the light blinked. Andre wanted to borrow it right away.

  Eugene was back. I ran into him one night at sunset, at the edge of the harbor. I was on my way to the pay phones behind Narragansett.

  “You’re taller,” he said. Then he paused and said, “And prettier.”

  He smiled and I could tell he didn’t mean anything by it. It was like something Gramps would say. I just stood in front of him for a while, breathing that air without menace or meaning.

  “Thanks for the scalpel.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Figured you might need it.”

  When I dialed the number Daisy left me, my dime came back and I got a recording that said “This number is out of service,” but I knew Daisy enough to try it again at the right time.

  My mother tried to help me pack for Woods Hole. She went through my closets and bought me more ridiculous underwear.

  “Lace isn’t gonna fix me, you know. I’m kind of beyond that, Mom.”

  I was sitting o
n my bed, watching her go around in circles messing up my stuff.

  “You’re beyond nothing, Joan Harris. And nothing is beyond you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Anybody ever tell you people it’s bad to put that kind of pressure on a kid? What if I want to just be a nobody?”

  “You’ll fail at that.” She laughed and kept folding stuff backward.

  “I still think you’re selfish, you know.”

  “That’s because I am,” she said. “Well observed. Just be sure you remember to be selfish, too.”

  I didn’t call the number again until I got back from Woods Hole five weeks later. When Daisy answered I realized he must have tried that number every Saturday at seven-forty the whole time I was gone. I called from a phone booth in South Highbone and said, “Daisy?” over the recorded lady’s voice. He answered me and we talked over her, going “This number is out of service. This number is out of service,” the whole time.

  “I’m back,” I said.

  “How was it?”

  “Daisy, this is weird. I can’t hear you.”

  “How WAS it?”

  “Good. I might go back next year. What did you do all summer?”

  “Beach, mainly.”

  We couldn’t string our responses together between the recorded lady’s voice. We ended up exchanging a bunch of conversational sentences that were too short to fit anything into them.

  Finally I said, “I’m coming in there, Daisy.”

  “This number is out of service. This number is out of service.”

  “That’s probably a bad idea.”

  “Shut up.”

  Daisy

  THE ONLY THING left for me to tell is how I learned to breathe again. How I stopped drowning in distance and absence and memories of violence.

  If I’d never met Kevin on the train that day in October, I might still be shut in my room, suffocating on my own thoughts. First he came when Anne was visiting him and then he drove over from Bay Ridge alone. He brought a sketchbook just like Andre’s and said he wanted to draw my picture.

  “I’ve never seen anyone who looked like you,” Kevin said. “I mean, not in person.”