The Perfect Liar

by Thomas Christopher Greene

  Freddy came out and they drove home. He disappeared upstairs with his headphones on. This was the thing, Susannah thought, about being a stay-at-home mom with a teenager: there were vast caverns of time. She looked at the clock. It was four fifteen. Max would be home around five thirty. An hour and fifteen minutes, given the circumstances, felt eternal. Maybe this was why people took pills or drank to kill the time.

  Susannah rifled through the fridge, pulling out things she could cobble together for dinner: a package of chicken legs, some baby carrots, a head of kale. She preheated the oven and broke the chicken down into pieces of legs and thighs and seasoned these with salt and pepper and smoked paprika, the way her mother used to do. Susannah rubbed them down with olive oil. She roasted them on high heat so that the skin would be crisp and the meat, moist. She put water on to boil for the carrots. The kale she chopped small, to sauté with onions and garlic. Freddy would eat the chicken and pretend to pick at the rest.

  The cooking helped. For the first time that day, Susannah felt her vision broaden, and the nagging pounding in her chest, the bear wanting to rise, seemed to slow to the tiniest of drumbeats. It reminded her of the importance of simple things. What it feels like to take care of people. When Joseph died, Susannah missed him tremendously, but the thing she missed more was being a wife. She knew that didn’t sound particularly feminist, but for her it was true. She liked being part of something bigger than herself, and she didn’t care if anyone else disapproved.

  MAX WAS A LITTLE LATE that night, but Susannah still managed to see him coming down the street, her day now bookended by these moments of staring out the window. Outside, it was a beautiful spring evening, the days longer now and the sun still high in the sky. He had a bounce in his step almost, moving quickly, and Susannah saw him shout out to the Larsens, neighbors of theirs who were on their porch. He gave them his best broad smile. Gone was all the tightness she had seen in his face earlier.

  She went back to the kitchen. A moment later the door opened, and for some reason she caught her breath as she heard his footfalls coming through the foyer and into the kitchen.

  He came toward her. “Something smells good.”

  “Roast chicken.”

  “Yum. I’m famished.”

  He was all large and charming and full of life: the magnificent Max, a man without a care in the world. This was not the same person, Susannah observed, who had pulled a second note off their door earlier today and then grimaced as if he had come home to find his beloved dog dead in the kitchen.

  His buoyancy continued through dinner. Susannah almost got swept up in it. Freddy definitely did, the two of them joking and laughing. She studied Max for clues. His eyes were so bright, almost manic. Then he told her he had seen David Hammer earlier and he had complimented her on her cooking.

  “That was nice of him.”

  “Yeah, we’re actually going to go running on Saturday.”

  “Running?”

  Max was not a runner. Sometimes he did push-ups in the morning before he got in the shower, but that was generally the extent of his exercise. She found him infuriating that way. He had those freaky genes. He could eat whatever he wanted and stay all long limbed and slender. Susannah ran because it helped with the panic, yes, but also because she thought if she didn’t, her ass would bloom like a roasted onion.

  “Yeah, trail running,” said Max. “David goes out and runs for hours on these trails in the woods. Sounds like something Freddy would love.”

  “Fuck that,” Freddy said.

  “Hey, language,” Susannah said.

  “Yes, language,” Max said. “Though I do think curse words are undervalued. I mean, fuck is like the English-word equivalent of Eskimos having so many words for snow. Tremendous versatility.”

  She smacked Max on the arm. “You’re not helping.”

  Freddy laughed, enjoying this breach.

  All along she stared at Max, until the moment she saw him staring back. His blue eyes were icy water. They no longer danced and were no longer filled with the mirth of the moment. What Susannah saw in them was chilling. She saw in them what she’d seen that night many years ago on a New York street, when he punched a stranger and knocked him to the pavement. She saw the raw power of that time, as if his mask had been ripped off, and again it both frightened and oddly thrilled her.

  Max doesn’t run, she thought. Yet he is going running with David Hammer. Max never did things just to make friends, unless it served a larger purpose. Which could only mean one thing: he had lied to her the other night when he told her David Hammer couldn’t be the one leaving the notes. Max still thought he was. What was Max planning to do?

  Now he was shutting her out, too, and she had to do her best to pretend she had no idea about any of it.

  IT WAS RAINING THAT SATURDAY morning, rainy and cool. It had rained all night and a mist had rolled in off the lake and engulfed their neighborhood on the hill. Promptly at ten, though, David Hammer pulled up in his black MINI Cooper and Max jogged out of the house in shorts and a T-shirt and a Windbreaker and folded himself into the passenger seat of the small car.

  David Hammer looked him up and down. “We need to get you a new pair of running shoes. Those aren’t going to cut it for long.”

  Max looked down at his vintage Nikes and David was right: they were more stylish than functional, but then again, Max thought, only assholes, his beautiful wife excepted, ran. This wasn’t about to be a new hobby of his. But Max was enjoying David’s snobbery about this and all things, that smug look of superiority he had, that educated-white-artist sense he had that everything was open to being curated, from clothes to his precious little car, which was so immaculate inside it might as well have just rolled out of the showroom.

  What a prick, thought Max.

  They made small talk as they drove through mild traffic up and over the hump of Main Street, past the university with all the students waiting in packs to cross at the lights. Soon they were on the highway, heading south. The rain picked up and David had no music on and for a while they drove in silence, the steady scraping of the wipers a percussive sound track in the background. David drove cautiously, a hair over the speed limit, and car after car streamed by them in the left lane.

  Fifteen minutes later they turned off on the Richmond exit and then onto a two-lane rural highway. They drove for about a mile, past the Round Church, so-named because of its shape, though it was actually an octagon, squared off on each side.

  Just past there, David took a left and then turned onto a dirt road that took them up a steep, forested hill. At the top of the hill, the woods gave way to open fields and a sprawling old brick farmhouse, with falling-down small barns behind it, one of them leaning so precariously it looked as if it might collapse just from the sound of David’s tires on the wet dirt road.

  Soon they were back in the woods and climbing on a dirt road so pocked that Max thought David’s precious car was going to bottom out. The road went from two lanes to one, and the forest, mostly spruce, came right to the edge of the road.

  Just as they were about to crest a hill, David pulled into a small turnoff, an old logging road, and carefully nosed his car in so that it wasn’t sticking out. “This is it.”

  They climbed out into the rain. They stepped onto the trail and David stopped and faced Max and began to stretch, windmilling his arms in fast circles, leaning forward on one knee and then the other. Max followed suit and they did this for a few minutes and David said, “You ready?”

  “Born ready.” Max smiled.

  David broke into a run and Max followed.

  At first the pace was easy, a jog, and Max thought this wasn’t so bad, but soon they were going straight up a hill, jumping over rocks and fallen logs, and Max’s lungs started to burn but he wasn’t going to let David know that. The forest was lush with spring and heavy with rain. Giant ferns grew everywhere, and when they reached the top of the hill, the trees parting in front of them, Max could see down to a s
teep ravine below. David stopped and Max, breathing heavily, did, too.

  “You okay, old man?”

  “Fine,” Max said.

  Now that they were standing still, the blackflies descended upon them, small swarms of them that they swatted at. They were all over Max’s head, the back of his neck.

  “That’s why we have to keep running,” David said, and he took off down the hill, darting between trees, and Max followed.

  Max struggled to keep up, and for a time David was decently below him, his head appearing and bobbing and then disappearing before reappearing again. Everyone hunted deer where Max grew up. Since he was without a father, Max did not. He had never hunted or even fired a gun, other than a BB gun when he was twelve and he and his buddy, Todd, used to try to shoot crows out of trees and blow out streetlamps in the small village.

  But this was what Max imagined it was like to have a whitetail in your sights, bouncing below you, trying to get free so you couldn’t squeeze off a shot.

  This thought inspired him to push past the pain in his lungs, and he was soon hurtling downhill and caught up to a smiling David, where he stood overlooking a massive gorge, carved rock on either side, a steep drop-off, and down below, looking over the edge, Max could see a churning spring river. David wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “What is this place?”

  “That’s Huntington Gorge. You mean you’ve never been?”

  “No.”

  “Crazy place. Not sure you want to swim down there, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’ll see when we get down there. There’s a waterfall. It causes crazy currents, especially when the water is high. People get sucked under and drown. Mostly high school kids, jumping off the rocks. All kinds of warnings posted, too. And even a sign with the names of those who died.”

  “Damn,” Max said. “Well, we won’t swim but I’m curious to see it now.”

  David started to run again. The trail widened as they moved downhill and soon it leveled and now Max could see the river clearly, fast moving and muddy.

  They left the tree line and now there was the noise of the falls, to their left, falling into a wide pool, rushing down into a series of pools, the water gray and white and churning. Above, a sheer, wet wall of granite extended up to where they had come from.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” David said.

  “It is.”

  “Just can’t swim in it. Though lots of people do.”

  Max nodded. The rain falling felt good, cool and wet against the heat of the run he had done. He watched the water, and over near the waterfall he saw a long stick moving through the currents, getting stuck in a vicious vortex for a minute, trying to fight its way downstream but unable to, before eventually breaking free and crashing against the rocks.

  DAVID DROPPED MAX OFF SOMETIME after noon. Every part of his body ached. It hurt as it had not in a long time. Susannah was out food shopping and Freddy was at a friend’s house. Max took a hot shower, and in the shower he kept picturing that falls and the water and he thought, What a fucking gift.

  On their way out, David and Max had stopped and looked at the green sign that had the names and dates of all those who had died in that spot. Innocent kids, the lot of them. Unlike David Hammer, Max thought, who had made the bad choice to try to mess with Max’s family.

  An empty house is a beautiful thing. The rain had picked up again and he heard the sound of it on the roof. He went naked to his bed and fell on it, slung half the comforter over his bare legs, and fell asleep.

  SUSANNAH WOKE HIM UP. SHE woke him by climbing on top of him, straddling him, and leaning down and kissing his forehead. Max came to with her red hair hanging in his face and said groggily, “Hey, love.”

  “Freddy is home, downstairs.”

  “So?”

  “You need me to be quiet.” She reached her hand down and fondled his cock.

  Max rose for her, as he always did, and with his hand gently over her mouth she moved on top of him until he saw the fragility in her face, that moment of letting go where she disappeared into herself, her eyes blank as the sky, leaving the room for a moment before coming crashing back in.

  She collapsed on him. Max rolled her over. They lay together, looking at the ceiling.

  “What did you do to David Hammer?”

  Max laughed. “More like what did he do to me? I can barely feel my legs.”

  “You didn’t hurt him?”

  Max leaned up on his elbows and turned toward her. “No, why would I hurt him?”

  “I saw the look in your eye at dinner. You forget how well I know you. You told me he wasn’t the one doing this to us, but I didn’t believe you. And I don’t blame you for lying. I know you were just trying to protect us—me and Freddy.”

  Max looked down at his wife. He looked at her big beautiful eyes, and her gorgeous skin, the thing that above all else defines beauty in women when they get older. He looked at her lush full lips, and he wanted to tell her, he really did.

  He wanted to share all of it with her, as a husband and wife should. Max wanted nothing more than to lay it all out for her, in great detail. But she was fundamentally right: he was protecting her and Freddy.

  “Some things are better if you don’t know.”

  Her eyes flashed. “That’s patronizing.”

  “No, no, it’s just smart. Not that anything is going to happen. But if it ever did, you know? I mean, what if you were given a lie detector test or something?”

  He said this on purpose. Susannah was scared to death of machines, anything vaguely hospital-like. She couldn’t have her blood pressure taken. It made her feel constricted, and Max seriously doubted that anyone would be strapping her to a lie detector, as if this were the CIA or something, but they had both seen the movies.

  Her features softened. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Always.”

  “At least there wasn’t a second note. I live in fear of it. Every day I think I’m going to go for my run and find it out there.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, okay?” Max said.

  “I just want you to be careful. Safe. All of us.”

  “Shhhh. Really. Trust me. Have I ever let you down?”

  “Maybe a few times?” She smirked.

  “Never.” He rolled over on top of her. “My turn to do the work.”

  Susannah looked up at him with those crazy big eyes and took his hand and playfully brought it down to cover her mouth.

  HER HUSBAND WAS A LIAR. Max had always been mercurial—sometimes brooding and difficult, but Susannah expected that. He had an artistic temperament. What the world saw of him was all light and charisma and that smile that could light up the winter. In private, though, he had moments of darkness. But in all their years together, she had never caught him in a lie. When they were first together, Susannah used to worry about other women. Not that there was anything specific, but she knew how women responded to him because she had. It was more her insecurity, she knew. Sometimes back in those days they would be out at a bar and a beautiful girl would walk by, all sashaying T and A, and Susannah would see her and look at Max thinking, He’s going to peek and that’s normal, but he never did. His eyes never wavered off Susannah.

  She had never wanted to be one of those women who went through her man’s phone. She had never done it. There was never any reason to. She felt his desire like you felt the breeze. They had ups and downs, some fights, and they weren’t perfect. But they never stopped having regular, and passionate, sex.

  Her friend Rose used to say all relationships ended the same way. “You no longer want to fuck each other, Susannah. Then you resent the other person, find fault, and then trust goes. You see devils around every corner. The paranoia begins to swallow you whole. And you are done.”

  No, that wasn’t an issue for them.

  Oh, how Susannah wanted to call Rose and let her know all about this. Susannah wanted to vent and tell her that Max had lied t
o her, have Rose tell her it was a big deal, that every little lie mattered, and give Susannah the chance to defend her strong husband.

  But she knew she could not. She had a deep sense of foreboding about how this was going to play out. It was eating her up. What did that second note say?

  Whatever it was, it was enough to get Max out on a run through the woods. It was enough for him to lie to her. And maybe his intentions for both of these were entirely good, but Susannah could feel the bad to come, as if something momentous were waiting over the next hill in front of them and no matter how quickly they swerved, they were still going to hit it.

  THAT NIGHT AT DINNER THE joke was how much that run had kicked Max’s ass, what an old man he was. Freddy got a kick out of it, Susannah pretended to, but she was going through the motions, keeping her head in the conversation, even though all she could feel was the panic under the ice of her skin.

  She had made scampi, sautéing shrimp in butter and garlic and parsley, and dumping them over angel-hair pasta. It was one of Freddy’s favorites, and her two boys ate with relish. Susannah drank white wine. More than she usually did. Like lots of people with anxiety, Susannah had a love/hate relationship with alcohol.

  Oh, how beautiful it could make you feel in the moment. But overdo it and the next day you were much more likely to have the panic come on like a flood. But that night she didn’t care—she wanted to be a little drunk. She wanted to be high, she wanted to quiet the nagging voices and sedate herself.

  Max went upstairs early and took a bath. Freddy went to his room and closed the door and she knew he was playing one of his video games, headphones on, connecting with people around the world with the same interests, which mostly consisted of pretending to be mercenaries, gangbangers, and car thieves.