“Anyway, we were hanging out, drinking out of the liquor cabinet and thawing steaks to grill, and my hair—I still had hair then—was a ratty dreadlocked mess and I asked Max, who kept his super-short, if he would cut it for me. When he did, we both freaked out a little because we suddenly looked like brothers. And then he had this idea.”
“What?”
“That we switch. I become Max W and he becomes Phil Wilbur and escapes. And I was like, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ It sounded so crazy. And he told me he would give me ten grand to get started as him—well, not him, but his name and his identity to get me going, and something I lacked, both an undergraduate and graduate degree from a prestigious place. ‘It’s enough to get you a cool job in the art scene in New York,’ he told me. I thought he was joking but I realized he needed this. And I did, too. A fresh start. And so we exchanged driver’s licenses. We drove to the city together and he packed a bag and got on a bus for Alaska. And that’s where he lives now. On this remote peninsula you can only get to by seaplane. He and the guy he fell in love with. They live completely off the land. And the rest of the story you know.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Only once. It was a couple of years after we did it. He called to thank me. I was working in the gallery then. He tracked me down there. He told me he had fallen in love. He told me about his cabin that he had built on this remote land he had bought. How he could pull salmon after salmon right out of the river near him and smoke enough of them to last all winter. That he could finally be himself. That he was free for the first time.”
Max stopped. They sat in silence, alone with the sound of the crickets. Max could almost see his words sinking in. He saw Susannah’s body relax a little; she was still on guard, but coming down from the height of the tree she had climbed. He was pretty sure she wasn’t about to jump anymore at least.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I wanted to, I really did. But I made a pact with him that I would never tell anyone. And he did the same for me. It was critical that we protect each other.”
“I don’t think of myself as anyone, Max. Or do I even call you that anymore?”
“Of course you do. It’s my name. It’s been my name. I’m so sorry, Susannah. Believe me, I wanted you to know this.”
“I don’t understand how his family didn’t find out. Wouldn’t they have traced you? Figured out you were using his name?”
“There are lots of people with the same name, of course. But, yes, it’s been a danger. The only link is the transcripts, which I am careful about. I still use my old name when I need to, like on the paperwork for this job. I told university HR that Max W is just a stage name. They didn’t say a word about it. I don’t use his Social Security number.”
“Wait, what does he do, then?”
“He doesn’t work. Doesn’t have to. And lives off the grid. He has no need for it. He wanted to disappear.”
“We should go to bed. It’s so late.”
“Come here,” said Max.
“I’m not ready.”
“Come here.”
He put his arm around her, brought her close. She fell into him, her head against his and her feet lifted up, and Max pushed off with his and for the first time that night and in the quiet dark of the neighborhood, they swung in the air like children.
THESE WERE THE TIMES THAT Max needed to be vigilant. When things got tight and they got close, he needed to run triage like an emergency-room nurse, assessing the dangers in front of him and laser-focusing his attention on those that presented the greatest threat.
David Hammer had exited the stage, after overplaying his hand. The police were out, though Max didn’t like the way Detective Scott had tried to look right through him in his office, her implication that she knew everything anyway, and that if she stared hard enough with those big eyes, he would fold like a cheap tent and tell her all his secrets, confess as if it were his job. Think again, Max thought.
Susannah, though, strong and delicate Susannah, his love, those golden-brown eyes so filled with pain and history, as if all of Spain’s sadness could be contained in an upward glance. Families that traced back through what horrors? War and diaspora and everything in between and who the fuck knew what else? Her gaze was never penetrating, but it could be the deepest, most soulful you ever saw.
She, the light of his life, his girl, his forever, Max needed to put back together like a finished puzzle that had been scattered across a wooden table.
His sitting on the swing that night, telling her a story that held enough of the truth to hold it together like glue, was the first step.
In the days after, though, and for this Max was grateful, life began to return to something approaching normal. Final exams were on, which didn’t mean much to the art faculty, such as Max, other than that the end of the semester, some final critiques, and graduation and the long summer to follow were staring them in the face. Max was ready to turn the page.
That was the thing about academia at its best: it had a rhythm to it, a flow that followed the seasons, or life itself, Max guessed, if you thought about it deeply enough. Things began and then came to an end. They started over anew and you did it again. But the best part was that a year came to a close and you didn’t have to look back. First, though, Max had another ten days or so to get through.
And to keep Susannah together in the meantime.
She wore her struggle on her face. That beautiful face of hers that in the best of times was smoother than her age should allow was suddenly tight, drawn, creased, and perplexed, the look of a woman you might pass on the street and if you considered her at all, it was only to wonder if she had somewhere to sleep that night.
There was no easy antidote to this, but the key, Max knew, was to learn from seasickness. If you focused too close, it got worse, but if you fixed on the horizon, you could steady yourself and find your legs.
So, as he had done before, Max made them a future. Freddy’s last day of school was Friday, June 20. Max went online and booked a house for a week on Cape Cod, the first Saturday in July, a little cape that sat on bluffs above the ocean in Wellfleet.
He didn’t tell Susannah before he did it, and it was nothing they had ever done before. When had they had the time, or the money, for a vacation?
They would be an American family, Max decided. Even more than they had been before. School would soon be out and they were going to the beach. Load up the wagon and go lie down a blanket on the sand and have a fucking picnic.
“I have a surprise,” Max said one night at dinner that week.
Susannah perked up, but Freddy looked at him skeptically, his eyes saying, Any surprise you are about to bring my way I am certain not to like. Or maybe he just didn’t want to take a break from the huge plate of chicken Parmesan he was shoveling into his mouth.
“Hang on.” Max walked into the living room to get his laptop.
When he came back, he was theatrical about it, knowing that Susannah didn’t like surprises, though she would love this. She loved the ocean. She and Freddy were both staring at Max as he opened the laptop. He took his time, sitting down next to them, but keeping the screen away while he brought up the listing.
One picture in particular he wanted them to see, an aerial shot, perhaps taken by a drone, of the house in its landscape, perched almost precariously on top of high dunes, the great blue Atlantic right below it.
Max found it and enlarged the photo so that it filled the screen.
“What’s that?” Susannah said. “Beautiful.”
“We go there first week in July. I rented that house for a week. On Cape Cod.”
“You’re kidding?” Susannah said cheerfully, though Max could tell it was forced. He had work to do. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Do I have to go?”
“Freddy?” Susannah said. “Of course you do. It’ll be so fun. The beach is right there, look.”
“You can bring
a friend if you want, buddy,” Max said.
This brightened Freddy a bit.
“But no video games, not at the beach,” Susannah said, and Max wanted to tell her just to let him be for a moment, that they could cross that bridge a little later. But she needed kindness from him right now, not corrections.
So they had something to look forward to. Check, Max thought.
The rest of that week and the next Max went through the motions of the end of the semester. He got his grades in, did some final critiques, and bade goodbye to the students he knew who were graduating.
Mostly, though, he kept a low profile. Everyone’s eyes were on him wherever he went—He’s the one, etc.—so Max just kept his head down and knew it would pass. All things do.
Two days before graduation, Max got an email from his department chair, Ernst, asking him to stop by Ernst’s office. Ernst had never before written Max directly about anything. Ernst was a hands-off chairman who only intervened if he had to, and even then reluctantly. Max had this moment of trepidation when he read the email, and it occurred to him that maybe David Hammer had filled Ernst in on part of what he had found out, namely that Max didn’t hold the degrees he had said he did. Ernst and David were close and had known each other a long time.
It would be ironic if this was how it came crashing down.
The building that housed the art department had no air-conditioning, and on some days the brick kept it relatively cool, but as Max walked up the curved wooden staircase to Ernst’s office, the air felt close to him, more than close, as if it were closing in, and he thought that this was how Susannah felt when her motor started to go and her world began to shrink.
Ernst’s office was in the far corner and encompassed the turret, which gave it big windows that looked down toward the town below and the lake beyond it. From the few times he had been in there, Max remembered that the views were stunning.
As he came down the hall, Max saw that the door was open. Max stopped before he reached it, took a deep breath, then came around and saw Ernst, looking small behind his desk, reading glasses on the end of his nose, studying papers in front of him. He would have looked like some kind of eyeshade accountant if the office weren’t carefully designed. The midcentury-looking desk that he had made himself many years ago when he was a young art student, his layered paintings on the wall, scraped over and over until they looked like ancient abandoned walls.
Ernst looked up and saw Max in the doorway. Ernst raised his head and removed his glasses. “Max, come in, please. Get the door.”
Max closed the door behind him and came in and took a seat in the one chair in front of the desk, a stool, low-slung and speckled with white paint. Max chuckled to himself at this. Ernst didn’t really like people, or students, and certainly didn’t want them to be comfortable.
“How are you?” Ernst said in his clipped German accent.
Max shrugged. “Fine,” he said, wanting it over with. “Semester almost over.”
“Yes, yes, it is. Thankfully.”
Max cut to the chase. “You wanted to see me?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
Max began to breathe.
“It’s a bit unusual, since you’re technically a visiting faculty, but I was touched by what you said at the service about David and I thought it might bring some closure—to use a terrible word—if you chaired the search for his replacement. I’ve run it by the others and there was great enthusiasm.”
Max smiled. It was not the smile, big and wide, he did for crowds, but the smile he couldn’t help. “I’d be honored.”
“Well, good, good, thank you. It’s settled then. Louise can help you with the details, putting together a committee, the announcement, those kinds of things.”
“I’m on it.”
“Well, perfect then.”
It didn’t feel hot anymore when Max walked out of the building into the near-summer day. He felt like celebrating. The elation he felt was almost manic, like on the day he sold his first word painting. Yeah, I will happily lead your fucking search, Max said to himself.
The lake below was wide and blue and infinite. Goldman Sachs was going to pay him fifty thousand dollars to talk for an hour. The summer was in front of them: a house on the Cape right around the corner and a chance to hit reset.
That night Max splurged on Susannah. They dropped Freddy off at a friend’s house and then drove south down the lake to the Shelburne Inn, a magnificent mansion from the 1800s smack on the shore. They ate on the porch watching the sunset. They had filet mignon and potatoes Anna and split an expensive bottle of French red, with crème caramel for dessert.
The next morning Max slept in and the two of them left the house at the same time, Max heading to campus and Susannah off for her run.
On the door, as it was closing behind them, and before he could do anything about it, Susannah saw the note before he did. He wasn’t able to stop her. She reached for it first.
Max had been terribly, terribly wrong. This wasn’t over. Not even close.
THE THIRD NOTE
IT DANGLED FROM THE WOODEN door, held up by a thin strip of Scotch tape. Susannah was quicker to it than Max, and afterward she would think it was because she was in that moment worried that somehow he would keep it from her, not let her make her own judgments, as he had with the last one, which was as patronizing as fuck when you thought about it.
Not today, my husband.
She grabbed it from the door and just as quickly he was behind her, leaning over her shoulder. Susannah opened it.
I SAW YOU DO IT
Susannah looked back at Max, and in the moment before he realized she was staring at his face, he looked stricken, but then just as quickly the mask returned. Oh, he is so good at that, she thought.
“Who are you going to kill now?” Susannah said loudly.
Max grabbed her wrist, hard. Max had never grabbed her before. He had never been physical with her in that way. It hurt, his hand tight and twisting.
“Be quiet. Susannah, really.”
He released her. They both stood there, looking up and down the street. The street was whisper quiet. They were the only ones out at the moment, and it was a regular morning. It might as well have been an abandoned movie set they stood on, a completely perfect and manicured vision of suburbia. Everything was perfect, and full of perfect people, except for the two of them, who looked the part, but were sliding backward into their true, deep imperfections, where they belonged. They were at a loss for words.
THE ONLY MAN SUSANNAH HAD ever been afraid of was her father. She wasn’t afraid of him in a physical sense—he didn’t hit her—but she was afraid of him for other reasons. He was short, her father, but he had this power over her that she both wanted to move into and away from. He had a strict and narrow way of looking at the world, and when it came to his daughters, he expected them to adhere to it and in his mind there was no room for error. He drew lines in the sands of life. If his daughters strayed and crossed them, he wouldn’t hesitate to turn them off like a faucet. As he did to Susannah when she came home with a baby boy.
Susannah was never afraid of Joseph. Sometimes he pushed her further than she wanted to go, deeper into things, opening her mind like a piece of fruit and peering inside it. He did make her uncomfortable. He made her move into her own skin in ways she was unaccustomed to. But she also knew he was fragile, especially physically. As he got older, especially in those months before his heart gave, sometimes she thought she could have pushed him over with a breeze.
And until now, she had never been afraid of Max. Not when she saw him level a strange man with a punch on a street, or even when she became convinced he was going to kill David Hammer. Sounds so strange and facile, but that was how Susannah felt.
But then Max grabbed her wrist. Like her father, Susannah had lines, too, and this was one of them. The marks and the bruising on her sore wrist were evidence of his crossing. She found herself both angry and afraid. She looked at
him differently now, as if it had dawned on her for the first time that not only was he capable of hurting people, but that he was capable of hurting her.
MAX HAD LET GO OF her wrist. “Don’t do anything, okay? Just wait for me. I’m going to be late.”
Once he was gone, Susannah was inside trying to tell herself to exhale, and she decided she needed to go for her run anyway, because if she didn’t, she would obsess about what the note meant, who wrote it, what the person was going to do.
But as Susannah did her loop, running down the hill and along the lake, it felt as if every set of eyes were on her. Even the most innocuous of glances, not the leering ones, the ones from women, say, were burning right through her. As if everyone knew something except for her.
As she ran, in her mind she saw the grimace on Max’s face as he took her wrist in his strong hand. It occurred to her that she had seen that look before: that night the Hammers were over for dinner and David brought up CalArts, and when Max thought no one was looking, he burned daggers through David’s skull.
David was dead two weeks later. But his fate had been settled in that very moment. He asked the wrong question, which in hindsight must have been innocent. David didn’t leave the notes, for if he had, they would have stopped coming.
“We are products of evolution, Susannah,” Joseph used to tell her. “Humans are simultaneously complicated machines and also very simple ones. Strip us away to our essence and you will see we are still the ancient people we once were, alone on a barren African beach, motivated by food and procreation, but mostly, the desire just to stay alive. Deep in a part of your brain lies the reptile you once were. When the tiger comes out of the brush, or more apropos, when the white bear emerges from the woods, do you fight or do you run?”
By the time Susannah finished her run, she had that feeling that she was stepping outside her body, floating away from herself, from the incessant beating of her heart, a throbbing in her ears.
The Perfect Liar Page 14