The Perfect Liar

by Thomas Christopher Greene

  Susannah vaguely remembered seeing him rise out of his chair and move to his desk to her left, against the far wall. She heard him open the top drawer.

  When she looked up, he was moving toward her with a gun in his hand. Susannah didn’t even know he had a gun.

  “What the fuck, Joseph?”

  “Sit down. Relax. This is therapy.”

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  He ignored this and pressed the barrel of the pistol into the side of her head. She looked up at him and began to cry.

  “I can read your mind.”

  “What are you saying?” she said between tears. “What is this?”

  “Susannah, listen to me. This is important. I can read your mind.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “I want you to think of a white bear.”

  “A white bear?”

  “Yes, a white bear. Can you picture it?”

  She was breathing hard and his voice was suddenly melodic and she did what he said. “Yes. I can picture it.”

  “I can tell.”

  “What is this? What are you doing?”

  “Think of the white bear, Susannah.” His voice was different, stony and serious. “Just like that.”

  And she was, thinking of the white bear, seeing it standing up, tall and pale and magnificent, while the metal point of the gun was pressed against her head, right above her ear.

  “I’m going to count down from ten. And when I reach one, if you are still thinking of the white bear, you are dead.”

  “Jesus, Joseph.”

  “Ten, nine, eight…”

  Susannah’s mind raced. She looked frantically around the room. The light from the lamp on the stand next to his chair was yellow. Yellow lamp, she said to herself. White bear. It wouldn’t go away.

  “… seven, six, five, four…”

  She made herself say yellow lamp over and over in her head, but the bear wouldn’t leave, vaguely formed, but there, all of it.

  “… three, two, one.”

  The trigger clicked emptily. Joseph lowered his hand to his side. Susannah screamed and flailed her arms and legs like a toddler on an unwelcome time-out.

  Joseph walked slowly to his chair and sat in it. He looked at her. He sighed. His voice was resigned. “You couldn’t do it.”

  She wanted to come at him but she was too fucked up to move. “You asshole.”

  “I was making a point, an important one.”

  “You pointed a fucking gun at my head.”

  “Yes, I did. But the white bear, Susannah. It is always there. It will always be there. You must learn to live with it. It will never kill you. In fact, if you want, you even get to hunt it. We can talk about what that means. You get to choose.”

  She felt the breath come back into her body. The fear had done something to her. Joseph had changed her. He had altered her mind, the very chemical composition of it, once again.

  Susannah wanted to fucking hate him. But she saw the way he looked at her and she looked at his handsome, wrinkled face and those soulful eyes were full of empathy. Now that it was over, his voice, especially, was calming her again, talking her to sleep.

  THE SECOND NOTE

  MAX DID NOT CONSIDER HIMSELF an evil person. If anyone had asked him about it, he might have rejected the entire idea of evilness, seeing it as too simple a construct. If pinned down, he would say he just saw the world differently. That he had a greater understanding of things that came through living outside it all.

  Max rejected history as a narrative of constant progress. He believed people confused technological innovation and comfort with actual progress. For when you stripped it all away, Max believed, we were what we had always been: tribal peoples just trying to survive and make sure our own do the same. We were all hunters on the plains of life, bringing back food for the village.

  To his mind that meant doing things outside the bounds of conventional morality, some of them large, and some of them small, to achieve this objective. He was not in the habit of lying to Susannah.

  But lie to Susannah he did, and he did it, he believed, to protect her. Parts of her were harder than diamonds, and other parts shattered like glass. Max supposed that was true of everyone, and being married sometimes means knowing which of those things you keep from the other for the greater good.

  For Max, not telling her the truth after the Hammers left was easier than sleep. He knew it was David Hammer who had left the note. Max saw it in David’s eyes. And Max heard it in the questions—asking him about CalArts and trying to walk him into a trap. He smelled it in David’s general disdain, which after a few drinks he hid worse than a two-bit magician.

  What Max didn’t know was how much David Hammer actually knew—and whom he might have told. Did his uptight wife know? Had he told other people at the university?

  Max’s hunch was that David didn’t know much. Maybe he’d discovered that Max had lied about his degrees. But if David had told anyone at the university, Max would certainly know by now. Those things were not taken lightly. He would have been summoned to the dean’s office and sent packing the same day, with a security guard to observe as he filled boxes and removed them from campus. The locks changed. No, David Hammer hadn’t done that. Yet.

  Instead he had chosen to screw with Max, and for reasons he didn’t know. Perhaps David thought he was clever, and this was fun for him. Was a sadist hiding behind that polite Southern drawl?

  Max spent that Sunday tossing those thoughts around in his mind, while around him Susannah and Freddy were oblivious of his internal musings. It was a beautiful spring day, with a warm breeze coming off the lake and a light chop when you looked out across to the mountains. Susannah forced Freddy—who wanted nothing to do with it—to ride the ferry out of Charlotte with his parents over to the New York side of the lake and the little village of Essex. People had been telling them they should do this since they had moved here. It was the perfect, easy day trip.

  They had lunch at a restaurant on the Essex dock and watched the sailboats going by, tacking back and forth against the wind. Afterward they poked around some small stores and art galleries. The art was what Max expected—touristy as shit, competent landscapes for rich people who wanted to put the same view they saw every day inside their houses.

  At a little used-furniture place, Susannah insisted on buying a small stool that was half-covered with splotchy paint. Max mildly objected, not knowing why she even wanted it, but it was beautiful out and she looked lovely and happy, and even surly Freddy was staying off his phone. Max also knew that a day such as this wasn’t complete unless you could later point to some artifact and say it reminded you of the way the sun felt that afternoon. Max lugged it around the rest of the day and was grateful when they got back to the other side and the car and he could let it go.

  There was something about a bright, lovely spring day. They were all in great spirits. That night Max even cooked for them—well, grilled, since he was no pro in the kitchen. But he made cheeseburgers, and while they were cooking, Susannah came and leaned into him and looked up at him with those candy eyes and that big smile and it was as if none of this were happening.

  The next morning, Max had a nine-fifteen class. He liked to go by his office beforehand and open his door and leave it open. This small, calculated move let the chair, who always came in around nine thirty, know that Max had already been there. If he had tenure, he wouldn’t have given a shit. But even with the stature of his appointment, he knew it was not to be taken for granted. He and Susannah liked it here too much.

  She was in the kitchen drinking her cappuccino when he left the house. Freddy had been gone for a while since he picked up the bus at seven forty-five out on Main Street. Max came rushing out the front door with his messenger bag over his shoulder and most days he probably wouldn’t have seen it. But for some reason today he turned and looked at the door after he closed it behind him, and there, three-quarters of the way up it, was a piece of pa
per folded in half and taped to the wood.

  Max stepped back and quickly snatched it and clasped it in his hand and kept walking. On the off chance Susannah was looking out the window, he wanted to get far enough away from the house so she couldn’t see before he read it.

  Halfway down the block, he stopped. He looked around. The street was empty. Max took the piece of paper from his hand and opened it.

  It had the same big blocky letters.

  DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT?

  David Hammer, you coward. Game on, Max said under his breath. He put the note in his pocket and walked toward Main Street. He climbed the hill to the university and went on into the meat of it, students streaming all around him on the paved walkways.

  MAX WAS NOT IMMUNE to guilt or regret. In the early years after the Adirondacks, he sometimes dreamed of the original Max W, seeing him not as he looked in that moment before the glass met his face, but with his wide smile when he pulled over that fateful day and picked Max up on the side of I-95.

  But later, it was as if it never happened, and if not for the occasional article you could find if you searched on Maxwell Westmoreland—Max W searches only turned up him—it was almost as if he never existed. This child of wealth and privilege who was trying to be a painter and was just ripped out of the world. And there hadn’t been anything in years. The last piece Max had found was from the Charleston’s Post and Courier, under the headline “Area Family Has Not Given Up Hope in Finding Missing Son.”

  It talked about how Max W was last seen by the local sheriff at his family summer home in upstate New York. But that he had returned to New York City and was thought to have disappeared there. That he was an eccentric and wealthy young man who had always been running from his family. One theory among his friends was that he had moved to Alaska and was living under an assumed name. Apparently, he had an obsession with Alaska, of getting as far away from his family and the money as possible. That he loved the land and hunting and wanted no part of society.

  Sometimes Max liked to think of Max W there. Living on the edge of some primordial forest, catching salmon from brackish rivers, and hunting deer and moose. Max pictured him painting away the shortened days and finding a boyfriend to make the long winters more tolerable.

  This was the beauty of being an artist, Max thought. You could imagine things into being. You don’t only reflect reality through art, you also get to create it, which is what he told his students over and over. Max’s life was living proof of that.

  MAX RAN INTO DAVID HAMMER after lunch. He was coming out of Chittenden Hall, one of the classroom buildings. Max was out front, talking to two female students from one of his classes. He saw David Hammer out of the corner of his eye, black jacket and white shirt on. His jacket matched the frames of his glasses.

  “Excuse me,” Max said to the two young women, and hailed, “David, hey.”

  David Hammer stopped, waited for Max, and smiled weakly. Max looked for any signs in his body language. But he was good. A pro at holding himself together, though Max was going to show him what a real actor was like. Anyone can pretend to be angry, or sad, but the bigger trick was never showing that you were.

  “That was fun the other night, man,” David Hammer said.

  “It was. Thanks for coming.”

  “Appreciate you having us. You have class now?”

  “No, just office hours this afternoon.”

  David Hammer nodded. “I’ve got a two-hour studio. Grind.”

  “It beats working.”

  “True.”

  “Hey, listen,” said Max. “The other night you were talking about trail running. I wonder if I could come with you sometime. Seems like a great way to keep in shape and get outdoors.”

  David Hammer looked Max up and down skeptically. “I didn’t know you ran. I’ve been doing it a long time. I go pretty hard.”

  “I’ll keep up.”

  “How about Saturday then? You free?”

  “I am.”

  “I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  “Perfect,” Max said.

  “See you then.”

  Watching David as he walked away, Max felt as if perhaps he had won something. David was writing the notes but hadn’t gone to anyone else, yet. Max could tell David hadn’t. He was way too pleased with himself. More important, Max had time.

  And now David Hammer was going to show how fast he could run to Max.

  SUSANNAH BELIEVED IN SMALL SECRETS. Tiny things you do. One of hers was that she liked to watch Max out the window when he walked to work. She also liked, if she knew when he was expected home, to look out the window to see him coming down the street, that moment when she anticipated his arrival, saying to herself, Any minute now he will come into view, and then there he was, that confident stride that she loved. Isn’t it funny, she thought, that you recognize your man just by the way he walks?

  Max had no idea this was something she did. Susannah did it for a simple reason: she wanted to appreciate him. How often do people get to just watch the one they love when the person is unaware of their gaze?

  A window in the foyer looked down the street. In the mornings Susannah would stand here and watch until he was out of sight on his way to the university. On his return, she stood here until he got close, then she faded into the kitchen as if she weren’t expecting him, as if she had better things to do with her afternoon than just hope he would be home.

  That Monday morning, as usual, she watched Max leave. She watched him bound off the porch with his long strides and onto the sidewalk. But that day something was different. At first, Susannah saw it in his face, a brief glimpse of his profile before he moved beyond her view. His face looked tight, clenched, as if he were chewing on something hard. She had seen this before, a tenseness that could come over him in moments and that he tried to hide from others. Usually it emerged in moments of anger, such as when she pushed him on something, and early in their relationship when it crept across his face, sometimes Susannah worried he might strike her. But he never did. That wasn’t Max.

  It was more that, she learned over time, he had to steel himself against anger. Max was complicated. All the great men were, Susannah thought, not that she had known many that she would put in that category besides Max. She had heard that somewhere. But underneath that electric charm lay a thick ribbon of anger. They were the flip sides of the same coin, right? Could you have one without the other? Susannah had never seen it.

  So, in that way, Max was not an exception. But as time passed with them, as he became more and more in demand, as his dreams started to come true, ambitions realized through both hard work and an innate ability to speak to people, Susannah saw this side of him less and less, as if it was not getting those things that made him tight, which she interpreted as more proof of his greatness, for many people, she thought, would find greater strain in success.

  But that morning it was all over his face. As she stood by the foyer window, her heart clenched when she realized why, or at least thought she realized why, she couldn’t be sure.

  For in his hand she saw the card he held, the carefully folded piece of paper, and while at the distance she was viewing this, maybe fifteen yards, she shouldn’t have known what it was. But she did, because one morning not long ago she had held a similar piece of paper in her hands.

  There was a second note.

  What did it say? And why wasn’t Max coming back to tell her about it?

  Susannah practiced her breathing. Those deep yoga breaths, long on the exhale. She brought her cappuccino to her lips and sipped from the frothy milk. She wanted to call Max and ask him, but she also knew he was on his way to class. He will text me, she told herself. Relax. He doesn’t know you saw him.

  But all morning she waited to hear from him—and nothing. She forced herself to run, but even running, she couldn’t stop thinking about it, moving down along the gray lake, surrounded by such beauty, but all she saw was those blocky letters, that careful script: the words of som
eone tormenting them. What did it say this time?

  After lunch, Susannah couldn’t wait any longer and texted him. She kept it simple; it was his job to come to her. How is your day?

  Good, he wrote right back. Busy.

  Anything going on?

  Just the usual.

  Susannah was out back, having one of those precious cigarettes she rationed out to herself. She was staring at the manicured backyard, the flower gardens that lined it, the fresh wood chips that Max had had the landscapers put down last week, shiny and brown against the perfect green edges. Why wasn’t he telling her? Maybe Max was just waiting to do so in person. But unlike watching him out the window out of love, this was not a secret he could keep. It affected all of them—Max and Freddy and her, their family.

  AFTER SCHOOL, FREDDY HAD A dentist appointment. He didn’t want to go, even though they had discussed it in the morning. Driving in the car down traffic-filled Shelburne Road, Susannah tried to draw him out about school. He didn’t talk about it much. But she was not worried. Freddy might have had a hot mess of a haircut and an addiction to video games, and he never seemed to study hard, but he always did well. School was easy for him, which it certainly never was for her. With what appeared minimal effort, he got all A’s and B’s. Clearly, his ability to ratchet up the focus when he needed it he got from Joseph.

  At a red light, Susannah turned and looked at him. He had his headphones on, as he almost always did, and she could faintly hear the beat of the hip-hop that was blasting in his head. His hair fell down over his eyes, and for a brief moment he pushed it unconsciously out of the way and she saw how pretty he was. This boy she had made, with long lashes and dark Spanish eyes.

  While Freddy got his teeth cleaned, Susannah tried to stay busy in the dentist’s waiting room. She kept checking her phone, thinking, Come on, Max, tell me. Tell me everything. But her phone was silent. She tried to busy herself with trashy magazines but had a hard time focusing even on the bullshit things that are written for people who can’t focus—“56 Ways to Please Your Man!” “Is Your Guy a Narcissist? Take This Quiz!”