True Love (and Other Lies)

by Whitney Gaskell

  It was a village, bathed in the last soft light of the late afternoon and blanketed with a light layer of snow. We were driving down an actual cobblestone street, surrounded by an enchanting mix of architecture. Brick town houses were leaning up against timber-framed houses, looking like a set of crooked teeth, and all of the doors were done up in Christmas wreaths. The antiquated shop windows were full of china and picture frames, or links of sausages and sides of ham, and there was an old pub with a beaten wooden sign: The Toad and Rabbit. A stately and somewhat shabby church reigned over the city square. It was dusk, and the pools of light emanating from the gas-lit street lanterns were beginning to be of some use.

  “Where are we?” I asked, and was a little disappointed when I saw another car pass us by, rather than a horse and carriage complete with jingle bells.

  “We’re in Kent, near the eastern coast. The village is called Dedham. What do you think?”

  “It’s absolutely breathtaking. Is this where we’re staying?”

  “Close, but we have a little farther to go,” Jack said, glancing over at me with a sideways smile.

  I settled in, happy to gawk out the window at the old-fashioned scene, flooded with the memories of every British novel I’d ever read that was set in a similar small town. The view became even more picturesque as we left the town and headed down a bumpy country lane with brambly brush lining either side, past rolling green hills geometrically divided by hedgerows. The odd cow or sheep, undeterred by the powdery dusting of snow, ambled through the pastures. I was seized by the essential Britishness of it, and had an urge to locate a pair of green Wellies and a dog and take a brisk hike throughout the countryside before returning for a cuppa in front of the fire. In a few minutes, we were turning again, and then again, and then Jack was turning into a driveway and parking near a thicket of enormous trees that blocked the view of our destination.

  “We’re here,” he said, looking as excited as a small child. “Come on, I can’t wait to show you.”

  We unfolded ourselves from the car, and it took me a minute of stretching so my muscles could pop back into their proper places before I followed Jack, who’d gone ahead of me down a path and out of sight. When I went after him, taking care not to fall on the slippery stone path, I gasped with delight. With an enormous grin on his face, Jack was waiting for me in front of a house—actually more of a cottage, really—and in the failing evening light, the stone façade appeared to have an almost greenish glow. The front door was smack in the middle of the house, with symmetrical windows on either side, and three above on a second floor, all flanked by black shutters, and bright lights shone from each window. A small wreath, thick with evergreen and red ribbons, hung on the door. It was a simple dwelling—nothing near the size nor scope of the rather grand yet crumbling Georgian mansion we’d passed shortly after we left the village—yet it was far more enticing.

  “Whose house is this?” I asked.

  “Do you like it?” Jack asked, smiling broadly.

  “Yes, of course,” I breathed, sure that I had never before and would never again see a house that was so perfect. It was appealing, warm, and welcoming, and it just drew me in, as if the house itself was eager to have me inside.

  “I think so, too. That’s why I bought it,” Jack said.

  “You did? When did you do that?”

  “Just a few weeks ago, right after I got back from New York. I’d been looking for a place for months, and then this one came on the market, so I grabbed it. I wanted it to be a surprise, that’s why I didn’t tell you,” Jack said. He looked quite pleased with himself.

  I frowned, and questions started to flood my thoughts. Was Jack planning on permanently relocating to England? He hadn’t mentioned moving back to the States, but I’d gotten the distinct impression that he was feeling displaced in his current situation. I’d assumed it meant he was homesick . . . when apparently, he was just getting the itch to get out of the city. It was a feeling I very much understood, but it was curious that Jack had never mentioned it to me before. And what did this all mean for us? If his future was here, in the English countryside, what did it mean about his intentions toward me?

  Oh God, what an old-fashioned way to look at it, inquiring after his intentions. It sounded like something my mother would have asked a high school boyfriend, I thought, rolling my eyes.

  I followed Jack up the walkway, and waited while he unlocked the black front door. Inside, the house was adorable, but nothing like Jack’s streamlined, comfort-based bachelor pad in London. Here, there was a lot of chintz, and flowered china in glass-fronted cabinets, and delicate-looking chairs that I had a hard time imagining Jack being able to fit his long body into. It was much more the kind of house you’d imagine blue-haired ladies holding tea parties in, not the home of a hip, urban-dwelling businessman.

  Jack must have noticed the curious expression on my face, for he laughed and said, “I bought it fully furnished, but I’m obviously going to be making a lot of changes. I’m not really the ruffled-curtain type. In fact, if you have any ideas, you know, about what to change, I’d love to hear them.”

  “Oh, I’m the last person you’d want mucking up your home decor,” I said with a laugh, thinking of my own eclectic apartment.

  “I don’t know about that,” Jack said, and gave me another strange look.

  I suddenly became very aware of an undercurrent between us, one that I didn’t fully understand. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought that Jack was suggesting we move in together, or at the very least hinting that we would in the future. This completely and totally freaked me out. It was too soon, far too soon to even be talking about it. And why the hell did he get to do this, to move too fast, to shatter the widely accepted etiquette of modern-day courtship? When a woman pushes for commitment too soon, if she were to dare suggest moving in together or shopping for an engagement ring at an early stage of the relationship, the object of her affection would bolt, his feet churning like the Roadrunner escaping Wile E. Coyote. And then anyone observing would shake her head and purse her lips, and murmur, What did she expect would happen, acting so desperate?

  Jack was expecting something from me, some kind of a response or reaction, but I had no idea what it was that he wanted me to say. I felt off-kilter, like I was moving sideways when everything else was going forward.

  “So, um, what are we going to do?” I asked, determined to change the subject.

  Jack continued to look at me without speaking for a moment. But then he gave me a funny little half-smile and said, “I’ll bring our luggage in, and then I guess we should make a fire—it’s freezing in here, and I don’t know how well the central heating works. I brought some groceries in the car with us.”

  “I’ll go out and get them,” I volunteered, wanting a chance to clear my head and to get away from whatever this weird vibe was that had sprung up between us.

  Was it a complete mistake for me to have come? I’d only been concerned about the betrayal inherent in what I was doing, and about the news that Jack and Maddy’s breakup seemed to be more complicated than I’d initially known—something I still wanted to ask Jack about when the opportunity arose. I hadn’t really thought out the part where I was spending a major holiday with a guy I hadn’t been seeing for all that long, and what that meant. Suddenly I started to feel a little panicky. My shoulders tightened and I couldn’t breathe deeply, instead inhaling in quick little puffs of air.

  “What’s wrong? Is everything all right? You must be exhausted from your flight. Why don’t you sit down and rest, and I’ll take care of everything,” Jack said, looking concerned. He tried to steer me toward the plump, chintz-covered sofa, but I held back, shaking my head.

  “No, I’m fine. Really. Look, I’ll go grab the groceries, and you go do whatever needs to be done in here, and it will all be fine,” I jabbered, and trotted out the door before he could stop me.

  It was nearly dark outside, and as I skittered over the stone path towar
d the driveway, I noticed that the trees I’d thought were so majestic and beautiful when we pulled up now had a faintly sinister look to them. Maybe this village was an idyllic backdrop for Christmas festivities—that I couldn’t deny—but what in God’s name was I doing here? Did I think that Jack and I were headed toward some gooey, Barbie-and-Ken happily-ever-after? Hardly. I’d gotten over any fantasies I had about my white knight crouching down on one knee with a diamond ring in hand the night Sawyer dumped me. Okay, sure, I was just as guilty as anyone else of daydreaming about my perfect life—my magazine life—that included the handsome husband and sweet-smelling babies, alongside the stainless steel Sub-Zero and cherry dining room set. And yes, lately in these fantasies the handsome-husband character had been played by Jack. But that didn’t mean that I was seriously entertaining any notion that it was really going to happen. I mean, the man had just purchased a house in the English countryside, for Christ’s sake. That would be an awfully long weekend commute from Manhattan.

  I popped open the trunk—as tiny as the rest of the car—and pulled out the Marks & Spencer bags resting in the back. Judging from the weight of the bags, there was easily enough food to see us through several days. Is that how long we were going to be out here, in the middle of nowhere? Days and days with nothing to do but stare at each other? It sounded . . . confining. And crowded.

  “What are you doing out here?” Jack appeared from behind me, still looking concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, fine. Sorry. Just lost in my own thoughts, you know, thinking about the trees, just Christmas stuff mostly. Carols and eggnog and all of that. Anyway. Um. Did you need something?” I wondered if I sounded as crazy to him as I did to myself. From the bewildered expression on his face, I thought probably so.

  “The luggage. I was going to bring it in,” Jack said. “I think maybe you should go lie down for a little while, you seem a little out of it.”

  That’s a nice way of putting it, I thought, cringing to know that Jack was probably also having second thoughts about the wisdom of locking himself away in the middle of nowhere with an insane woman.

  We went back in the house, and while Jack took the luggage upstairs, I hauled the store bags into the small but pleasant kitchen. He’d gotten the basics—orange juice, milk, croissants, fruit, French bread—as well as some delicious-looking prepared foods, and quite a bit of Swiss and Gruyère cheeses, and chocolate. And, happily, half a dozen bottles of wine, one of which I immediately cracked open.

  I decided to take Jack’s advice about lying down—maybe my panic was just a result of jet lag and general exhaustion—so I poured myself a glass of wine and took it into the den, where Jack had started a fire. I curled up on one corner of the couch, and drank my wine while I stared at the fire and took deep breaths and generally tried to keep my anxiety from spiraling out of control.

  Jack came back downstairs, but instead of sitting with me by the fire, he gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and headed toward the kitchen, where he spent some time rustling around and banging cupboards. I must have dozed off yet again, because the next thing I knew, Jack was gently shaking my shoulder and as I woke up slowly, stretching and yawning like a cat, I saw that he’d brought dinner in on a tray. It looked delicious—a pot of cheese fondue, accompanied by cubes of French bread and a chilled bottle of white wine.

  “Mmmm, that looks delicious,” I said, trying to figure out just how fattening it was to eat a meal that consisted of chunks of bread dipped in melted cheese. When I’d first started dating Sawyer, we’d eaten out constantly, and I’d been too busy falling in love to have any sense about what I was putting in my mouth. As a result, I gained ten pounds which I didn’t lose until later, when I was pounding out my post-breakup misery on the treadmill. Not wanting to wear my fat pants again had been yet another reason for my fear of romantic entanglements.

  “Merry Christmas,” Jack said, raising his glass in a toast.

  “Merry Christmas,” I replied.

  We ate quietly, the crackle of the fire playing nicely against the wind that had picked up while I napped, and was now howling indignantly against the windowpanes. It was a companionable silence, although I was feeling a little shy from my earlier nuttiness. I wished I could just relax and enjoy my time spent with Jack, and stop worrying about what was going on or how to sidestep being hurt. And I wondered what he was thinking about . . . it wasn’t like him to be so quiet. Suddenly the silence felt oppressive, and the room overly hot.

  “So, um, what’s there to do around here? I mean, is there anything you have planned for us to do?” I asked, cringing at how artificial I sounded.

  Jack had finished eating, and was leaning back against the couch, glass of wine in hand. He regarded me from under half-closed lids, appraising me with the same quizzical expression he’d been wearing earlier.

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked, nudging me gently with his foot.

  “Nothing. Really. Why?”

  “You’re just acting a little strange, and I’m getting the feeling that you’re uncomfortable here. We can drive back to London, if you’d rather stay there. I just want to spend time with you, and I don’t care where we are,” he said.

  He was just too damn nice. Now I felt terrible. I knew I was acting like a freak, and had been since we’d gotten to the country. Jack had gone to great trouble to deliver an idyllic English winter wonderland for Christmas, and all I’d done was gawk and shuffle around like a surly teenager being forced to spend the holidays on a family vacation away from her friends.

  “No, this is perfect. There’s no place I’d rather be,” I said truthfully, reaching out and taking his hand in mine. “I think I’ve just been feeling strange because of the time change.”

  Jack looked relieved, and slid closer so that he could put his arm around me. “Good. You can be so hard to read sometimes,” he said.

  “You think so?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. I’ve never met anyone like you before,” Jack said, which was enormously flattering until he continued, “I have to work harder with you.”

  “What? Really? You think so?”

  He shrugged, and touched my cheek with a finger. “Your defenses are pretty well developed,” he said.

  Ouch. I knew what he was saying was true, but it didn’t sound all that flattering when he put it that way. It made me feel like I was damaged somehow, one of those hardened, bitter women who end up sneering every time they see a couple holding hands and spend wedding receptions announcing there’s no way the marriage will last.

  “And you’re used to women rolling over for you?” I asked, somewhat more pointedly than I meant to.

  “See, that’s just what I mean,” Jack said with a smile, although I didn’t know what he meant at all.

  But then Jack leaned over and kissed me. And then kissed me again. And pretty soon, my defenses came crashing down, at least for the time being.

  Chapter 17

  After that first night, I was able to loosen up and relax, and the remainder of our time in Dedham was much less stressful. Christmas Day was picture perfect, complete with a fresh new dusting of snow. It was a day spent lazing around in front of a roaring fire and never-ending Christmas carols on the radio. We even navigated through the trickiest part of the holiday—the dreaded gift exchange—as easily as possible, probably because we got it out of the way first thing in the morning, while we were still lounging around in a tangle of sheets and blankets.

  I had worried endlessly about what to get Jack. Deciding on a Christmas present for a new boyfriend requires the same careful planning as a chess move, with many more important considerations than any one person’s individual wants or needs. The gift can’t be too personal or too impersonal, it can’t be too cheap or too expensive, it can’t be a demand for a commitment (like a watch or cuff links), or indicate a veiled criticism (like a PDA). Once you’re constrained by such criteria, there’s little left on the table, other than clothing, which is hard to buy for a ma
n you haven’t known for very long. Plus, since Jack and I had for the most part conducted our relationship over the telephone, I hadn’t seen much of his wardrobe. I didn’t know if he already had a green sweater that exactly matched the shade of his eyes, or whether he favored conservative ties over the wild patterned kind.

  I’d spent the Saturday after my return from Chicago dragging around from store to store, looking for something that would send just the right message, and was about to completely give up and buy him something horribly impersonal, like a gift certificate, when I wandered into the Coach store and saw a tray of beautiful wallets in a glass case. Twenty minutes later, I practically skipped out of the store with a bag containing a black leather double billfold wallet carefully wrapped in tissue paper. It was $108.00, and absolutely perfect in every respect—respectable price, neither overly intimate nor too businesslike, and didn’t have any underlying messages.

  And, that Christmas morning, when Jack tore off the green tissue paper I’d wrapped the box in, I knew I’d done well. He looked pleased, and neither over- nor underwhelmed. He admired it for a few minutes, and assured me that he did in fact need to replace his wallet, and how had I known. He then dug out a small square box professionally wrapped in silver foil and handed it to me. I ripped the paper off greedily, shook open the gold box . . . and then gasped. It was a necklace, a beautiful necklace—a delicate gold chain with seven round bezel-set diamonds—that clearly cost much more than the crappy wallet I’d gotten him. It was elegant and ladylike and maybe the nicest Christmas present I’d ever received. Certainly better than the news of my parents’ imminent divorce. I gaped at it, and shook my head, while Jack smiled and looked pleased with himself.