Lies You Wanted to Hear

by James Whitfield Thomson

  The first place I went to look for a job was the Class Report Office at Harvard. My old friends were glad to see me, but there were no openings. Several publishing companies told me they might have some freelance work, but nothing came through. I finally got the job at Garbo’s through Sandor, who was a friend of Tillie’s. Tillie was a blunt woman about sixty who chain-smoked Parliaments, and the two of us hit it off immediately. She offered me a job as the lunchtime hostess, eleven to three-thirty, Monday through Friday, the perfect schedule for me. The restaurant catered to athletes and politicians and other celebrities. Not much intellectual stimulation, but rumors and gossip wafted through the place like the smell of fried clams.

  I glanced at the tip Lincoln Halstead had given me—a twenty—and led him and his minions to a table. (He had slipped me a hundred once, back when he still thought he could get in my pants.) We were so busy the wait for ordinary customers stretched out to over an hour. The highlight of the afternoon was three guys with English accents dressed like lost rockers from the Ziggy Stardust tour who were ordering Mouton Rothschild at two hundred dollars a bottle.

  When I got home from my shift, there was a note from Brenda on the kitchen table saying she’d taken Sarah and Nathan to the playground. Brenda did a good job with the kids, who adored her, but I felt like she judged me constantly and found me wanting as a mother. It was never anything direct—Brenda was too smart for that—just a look or a veiled question. Matt, in her eyes, could do no wrong. I lit a cigarette and checked the answering machine. The first message was from Jill, checking in. The second message was a hang-up—a distinct pause before the caller broke the connection—which had happened several times earlier in the week. I erased the messages and opened a bottle of pinot grigio. Knowing the look I’d get if Brenda saw me with a wineglass in the middle of the afternoon, I poured the wine into an orange plastic tumbler.

  On the way upstairs, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror in the foyer. I stopped and sucked in my tummy and brushed the front of my skirt. Tillie expected me to dress up for the job, and I enjoyed wearing stylish clothes, putting on makeup and jewelry. For the first time in ages, I felt attractive again, the feeling affirmed by the men who flirted with me at the restaurant. I leaned closer to the mirror and examined the crease between my eyes. When I frowned, the crease deepened, and I tried to smooth it away with my thumb. Amanda had the same crease, which was permanent now, time and alcohol and cigarettes taking their toll.

  ***

  I went upstairs to change clothes. Matt was away in Madrid and due home tomorrow afternoon. The courier service was growing steadily, but Matt still did most of the traveling himself. For the past several months, he had been gone two or three nights a week. Meticulous as ever, he marked his trips on the calendar in the kitchen and always left a phone number of the hotel where I could reach him. I never begrudged his time away; it gave me a chance to be alone with the children, bathing them and reading to them before I put them to bed. After doubting myself as a mother for so long, I’d begun to feel competent. Needed.

  When Matt first started going on the road, I hoped, as I’m sure he did too, that his travels would rekindle some romance between us. I imagined horny homecomings when we couldn’t wait to be alone. Or, perhaps, accompanying him on a trip somewhere—Venice, Barcelona—just the two of us in a luxury hotel, the theater, museums, breakfast in bed. No hint of that yet. Matt grumbled about the time away, saying he was looking forward to the day when other couriers would take all the trips and he could be home every night with me and the kids. Perhaps it was my vanity or complacency, but with all his absences, I rarely gave much thought to the idea that he might stray.

  Then, a few weeks ago, as I was gathering his shirts to take to the dry cleaner’s—he always wore a coat and tie when he traveled—I pricked my finger on something sharp and found an earring post poking through the fabric of the breast pocket of one of the shirts. The earring was unique, a red stone set in a gold leaf-shaped setting. I was actually more surprised than hurt at finding it. In some ways, I didn’t blame Matt; our sex life, which had dwindled to nothing during my depression, had not exactly come roaring back. There were no lipstick stains on the shirt, just the faint whiff of another woman’s perfume. I stuffed the shirt in the laundry basket and put the earring in my jewelry box along with the other lost sisters of my own that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

  A few nights later after I found the earring, I said, “I just want you to know that I know what you’ve been doing.”

  I was sitting sideways on the couch in the living room, Matt in an overstuffed chair.

  “What’re you talking about?” he said.

  “That you’ve been unfaithful.” I tried to sound matter-of-fact, but that word, unfaithful, was larded with rebuke and self-pity. “I found her earring in your shirt pocket.”

  Matt stared at me for a moment, then looked away, his face stricken with guilt. When he looked back, he said, “Lucy, I…” He tried again but couldn’t speak.

  “Is this serious or just a one-time thing?”

  “Just once, but it’s not what you think.”

  Of course it was only once, that “forgotten” earring probably a cry for attention. Even so, I gave my lip a skeptical curl, savoring my victimhood; it had been so long since I felt righteous about anything.

  “Honey, I didn’t actually…I was in a restaurant and—”

  “Please, spare me the details.”

  His eyes welled with tears. I let him dangle for a moment, then smiled sadly and opened my arms. “Come.”

  He knelt beside me, and I stroked his hair. I thought about that night in the kitchen of my apartment in Cambridge when I told him I was pregnant with Sarah. I had lied then and said nothing had happened with Griffin. I wasn’t about to confess to that now, but didn’t his betrayal make us even? I came from a family of serial adulterers; this was nothing we couldn’t work through.

  I kissed him. “I haven’t been much of a wife, have I? I need to take better care of you.”

  We went upstairs and made love and fell asleep. When the baby woke up crying in the middle of the night, Matt got up with him and didn’t come back to bed.

  The next morning he was quiet, unable to look me in the eye. I assumed he felt guilty and ashamed, and I let him be. At dinner he acted like everything was fine, but after the kids were in bed, it all came boiling out.

  “Is that it?” he said. “Is this whole thing over for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think I slept with some other woman, and you just sit there and act like nothing happened. How can you be so fucking nonchalant?” His tone turned to mockery. “Matt cheated on me. Tsk tsk, naughty boy. I hope he doesn’t do that again.”

  “Sorry,” I said, caught off guard. Wasn’t I the injured party? “You said it was only once. I didn’t want to make a scene and have some horrible fight.”

  “Why not? Aren’t you jealous? Don’t you want to start throwing dishes? Don’t you want to strangle me? If this isn’t worth fighting about, what is?”

  “Guess I’m not the dish-throwing type.” The moment I said it, an image of the crystal vase I’d flung at Griffin sailed through my brain. “I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. You made a mistake and said you were sorry. What was I supposed to do? Kick you out of the house? File for divorce? Is that what you want?”

  “I want you to care, Lucy. I want you to act like this is something more than me forgetting to take the garbage out. I want—”

  “You never forget to take the garbage out.” I was teasing him, trying for a little humor to take the edge off the situation.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I forgot. I’m perfect. I don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, never look at other women. Well, not this time. I looked and she looked back. We went up to my hotel room and fucked our brains out. I ate her—”
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  “Stop! You don’t have to be cruel.”

  “Cruel? I’ll tell you what’s cruel. We’re dying here, and you act like there’s nothing wrong.”

  “I know things were rocky during my depression, but we got through it, Matt. We’ve been doing okay.”

  “I don’t want okay, Lucy. I want us to be great. I’ve been crazy in love with you since the day we met. I don’t want to lose you. To lose us! I don’t want some half-assed marriage where I cheat and you cheat and we smile and have friends over and act like everything is peachy keen. Is that what you want? Lies, secrets, denial? Your parents all over again?”

  I let him rant without trying to defend myself. What he said rang true. He was a good man, a terrific father. I liked being married to him and loved him as best I could, but it would never be enough for him. His love for me was almost more than I could bear. As I stood there listening to his complaints, I knew with absolute certainty that one day our marriage would end. It was only a matter of time before Matt looked at me with disdain or utter indifference and said that he was tired of trying, that he didn’t care anymore. But not now, not this time. He was still striving, his anger and frustration still laced with the yearning. It was a feeling I knew all too well, the belief that if you did everything perfectly—listen, fuck, laugh, pretend—you could win over your lover and make him realize this was the only place on earth he wanted to be.

  Matt railed on until he wore himself out. Since then, neither of us wanted to bring up the subject again.

  ***

  I was pulling on a pair of jeans when I heard the front door open.

  “Mommy?” Sarah called from the front hall.

  “I’m upstairs, sugar pop. I’ll be right down.”

  “We picked some flowers.”

  “Really? I can’t wait to see.”

  I slipped on a T-shirt and went downstairs with my wine in the orange plastic tumbler.

  Sarah presented me with a bunch of daylilies. “A nice lady had them in her yard and said we could take some home.”

  “Oh, thank you. They’re so pretty.”

  Nathan said, “Up, Mama.” I handed the flowers to Brenda and unbuckled the stroller and lifted him up.

  “How’s my big boy? Did you have a good day?”

  “We always have a good day,” Brenda said.

  I wiped an imaginary smudge of dirt from Nathan’s cheek, took the flowers back, and told Brenda she could go. Out in the kitchen, I gave the kids a snack. Sarah got out her coloring book and crayons and went to work on a picture of Snow White and Dopey. She had changeable gray-green eyes like mine; otherwise, her face was all Matt. Rory jumped up on the table, and I shooed him off. Sarah watched me pour some more wine into my tumbler. Maybe it was my imagination, but she seemed to have Brenda’s look of disapproval in her eyes.

  The telephone rang. I picked it up and said hello.

  “Hello, Lucy,” Griffin said.

  Chapter 18

  Matt

  The stewardess woke me to say we’d be landing in twenty minutes. It was a Saturday morning in mid-October, and I was escorting ten-year-old twin girls from New York to see their father in Madrid. Damita and Dalila Flores-Crane. I couldn’t tell them apart. They were tall and lanky and as beautiful as their mother, Ariel Crane, an internationally famous model. The twins already knew they had the world by the tail. Their father, Hector Flores, had been a mid-level player on the pro tennis circuit when he married Ariel. Several years ago, the couple’s divorce provided rich gossip for the press. Now, Hector ran one of his industrialist father’s companies. I’d made two previous trips with the girls. This time, Hector had invited me to stay for the weekend so we could play golf and go fly-fishing.

  On my last trip, we’d had dinner together at his villa. The twins had gone to bed, and Hector and I sat on the veranda in the cool blue light of the swimming pool.

  “I see you are a married man,” Hector said in English. He had been educated in England and had no trace of a Spanish accent.

  “Yes.”

  “And your wife, is she beautiful?”

  “Very.”

  “I’m sorry.” He put his hand up. “No offense. I only mean that beautiful women, so many of them have a way of…”

  “Cutting your balls off?”

  He laughed. “And putting them on a string. But when she walks in the room and all the men turn their heads, you feel your chest swelling up with pride. Those are my cojones she’s wearing around her neck.”

  “We’re willing victims, I guess.”

  “Yes. And now my daughters?” Hector put his palms together and lifted his eyes to heaven and asked God to protect los inocentes. He didn’t mean the twins.

  We stayed up late, talking. Hector started telling me about his divorce. He said it wasn’t as sordid as the stories in the tabloids, but there was no way to fight it. Suing to refute the rumors only gave them some validity. Hector was mortified, but Ariel didn’t seem to mind. Her career had taken a dip, and she relished being in the limelight again. The most absurd part of it all, he said, was that he still missed her. I was grateful for his openness. I couldn’t conceive of the anguish I would feel if Lucy and I split up. A few months ago, she had found that stray earring in my shirt pocket. I wanted to talk with Hector about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to say a word.

  I had met the woman in a restaurant in San Francisco. Like me, she was dining alone. We traded glances, and she asked if I’d care to join her. She was Japanese, with a lovely face and a heart-shaped mouth. I liked the way she kept tucking her silky black hair behind her ears. The red stone in her gold earrings matched her lipstick. She said her name was Shirley. I said mine was Fred. She was a site manager for a company that installed trade show booths.

  I said, “Does the job keep you on the road a lot?”

  “Constantly.”

  “Me too.” I said I was a salesman. Medical supplies.

  “I loved traveling for the first few years, seeing new cities, trying different restaurants. Now?” She playfully puffed out her lower lip. “Too many nights sleeping alone.”

  It was strange the way women had been coming on to me in the past year or so. That rarely happened when I was single.

  Shirley lived in Portland, Oregon. She said she had two sons, both in college. She wore a wedding ring but didn’t mention her husband. I was wearing my ring too. I didn’t say anything about Lucy and the kids, and she didn’t ask. Conversation with her came easily. She told me her family had been sent to an internment camp during the war.

  “They sent your whole family?”

  She nodded. “My parents, my three younger brothers and sisters. Aunts, uncles, cousins. We kids had a ball.”

  “Were your parents bitter?”

  “More confused, I’d say. They were very patriotic. My grandparents came to America before the turn of century. I’m named after Shirley Temple, for goodness’ sake. As I got older I tried asking questions, but the camp was a taboo subject.”

  I ended up telling her about the death of my mother and how much I missed her. “It’s odd,” I said. “I think that’s the first time I’ve really been able to talk about it with anyone.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.”

  “Then I guess that person’s not a stranger anymore.” Terrible line, but she was kind enough not to laugh.

  We left the restaurant and walked along the waterfront. Even in late July, the air was chilly and dank. Shirley was tiny, barely up to my chin. She shivered, and I took off my sports coat and put it over her shoulders. (I was glad I’d left my gun with the concierge in a safe back at the hotel.) We stopped to look at the seals swimming in the harbor and lounging on pylons, barking for food. Shirley snuggled close to me with her cheek against my chest. I kissed the part in her hair. I loved the smell of her, the newness. Passersby
would have seen us as two people in love. I wished I hadn’t lied about my name.

  She was staying at the Fairmont. I was at the Mark Hopkins across the street. I hailed a cab. My heart thumped as I held her in the backseat—one beat for desire, the next one for guilt.

  We crossed the lobby of the Fairmont. When we got to the elevators, she turned and said, “Thank you for a lovely evening, Fred. I’ve had a wonderful time, but we need to end it here.”

  “Why?” There was disappointment in my voice and relief in my chest.

  “I don’t know. Instinct. You’re new at this.” I didn’t reply. It probably wouldn’t have taken much to change her mind. “Blame it on the wifely code of honor. A bit of moral gymnastics, I suppose, but I don’t want to be the first.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me with her pretty mouth. As the elevator doors began to close, she tucked her hair behind her ears, and I noticed one of her earrings was missing.

  When Lucy confronted me a few days later, she had already assumed the worst. I tried to explain but only halfheartedly. How could I prove that nothing had happened? It was like Hector said about the stories in the tabloids: the harder you tried to refute them, the more they seemed true. Besides, I had wanted to sleep with Shirley. Only her good sense had kept me faithful. As Lucy glared at me, I felt vile and ashamed. I was afraid she would ask me to move out and say she wanted a divorce. But after a few sarcastic remarks, she was ready to drop the whole thing. She said she hadn’t been a good wife; it was her fault as much as mine. We went upstairs and made love, and I was in the absurd position of feeling like I’d gotten off easy for a crime I didn’t actually commit. Then I got suspicious. Lucy almost seemed relieved by what I had done. I lay awake feeling agitated, wondering what she was trying to hide. Perhaps she was having an affair herself. But then why bring up the earring at all? Why not simply stash it away and use it to assuage her own guilt?