Unreliable

by Lee Irby

  “It’s her mother’s fault. She never set any boundaries for those children and by the time Mead got them, it was too late.”

  “The mom, his ex-wife, she lives in Richmond?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And she works at O’Bloom’s?”

  She turns away from me rather guiltily, but it wasn’t my intention to get all Perry Mason on her. I’m the last person who’d ever cast aspersions at someone for odd behavior, such as showing up at places where the ex might be. I know she’s ashamed, and shame is like bleach: it can cleanse or it can deface, depending on the amount. “That’s not the only reason I was there,” she admits, sinking down into a chair at the table. “I happened to be in the area, and I thought I saw his car. It’s hard to miss that car. Then I couldn’t breathe, and so I called you.”

  “Which explains why you couldn’t call him.”

  “I wasn’t snooping on him. I trust him. He’s very honest and he’s never lied to me about anything.”

  Honest people scare me. Honest people like to tell the truth, even if it means crushing someone’s heart. Honest people disdain guilt and feel so much better after they’ve confessed, leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess. How long would the world last if everyone tried to be honest? Ten seconds? Does this dress make my ass look big? Are you having an affair? Did you kill your ex-wife? If the human species evolved to be an honest one, then why is our frontal cortex so immense and capable of inventing entire landscapes that are utterly false? Why do we dream? Unreality is as crucial to us as oxygen. “I’ll defer to your wisdom,” I say, getting down two mugs from a cabinet.

  “She’s very pretty. She looks just like Gibson.”

  The green-eyed monster, rearing its ugly head. How did you deal with your own jealousy, Edwin? In a healthy way? How many hours did you spend googling “Igor Nemsky” in the hopes of finding something incriminating or revealing or even better titillating, perhaps a testimonial from an old girlfriend describing his prowess in bed? “She isn’t his wife anymore, but after tomorrow you will be.”

  “Unless Tredegar gets blown up first.”

  The water begins to boil, causing the kettle to hiss ever so slightly. I turn off the burner and fill the mugs. I locate two bags of green tea and let them steep. Of course I’ve been thinking of that strange flyer I found among Graves’s laundry, the one vowing to bring “da funk” to Richmond, courtesy of the Bastard Sons. Is “da funk” they had in mind akin to a neo–Weather Underground communiqué? The Weathermen bombed multiple buildings and blew themselves up as well, but I don’t know that the Bastard Sons even exist. Still, maybe it’s time to take a harder look at Graves, now that the gun is missing and landmarks are being evacuated.

  “Do you think Graves took that gun?” I ask, careful not to sound overly hostile. My mother needs no more weight added to her burden.

  “No. I think the Russian did. There were problems, apparently, with the money and the freight costs.”

  “How did he get inside? There’s no sign of a break-in.”

  “I don’t know. I still think the police should be involved but apparently I’m the only one who does.” This strikes me as perfectly reasonable, but we both know the authorities won’t be called in, which leads me to consider the problem from a different angle.

  “Why can’t Graves associate with Avery?”

  This question sends a jolt through my mother’s slumped body. But secrets revealed carry a potency strong enough to raise the dead. “Why do you ask that? Was he here?”

  “Can you tell me why first?”

  “If he was here, we must know that. Avery is a very disturbed person who really needs to be monitored. Was he here at the house?”

  “When I arrived last night, I saw Graves saying good-bye to somebody and he asked me not to mention it.”

  “Eddie! How could you do that?”

  That is a great question that could apply to any number of episodes in my life. In many ways, it’s the ultimate question that defies easy analysis…or does it? Perhaps the explanation is straightforward: I’m a creep. But my mother won’t accept that verdict, and so I must grope for causation because reasons must exist for everything. She deserves better, though. I’ve failed her like I have everyone else.

  “I was exhausted from the trip, and we’d just met. Graves seemed like a normal person, whatever that means. So did Avery, for that matter. And the next thing I know, Graves asked me not to say anything about his friend stopping by. I didn’t want to bring everyone down—remember when the RPG was supposed to be missing? I was going to mention it then, but the RPG was found and I took Graves shopping. It was stupid and wrong, but I just wanted the weekend to go off without a hitch. Who was I to jump into the middle of a family squabble? It had been years since I stepped foot inside this house. I didn’t think I had the right.”

  My mother refrains from jumping on me and instead takes her mug of tea and sips it. My hands are shaking too much for me to lift mine. I need to calm down, gather myself, forge ahead…

  “So now we know where Graves is and why he left,” she offers stoically. “Maybe I’m overreacting. It’s just Graves used to be a very sweet kid who wanted to make the world a better place—but then something in him snapped and people like Avery started hanging around, spewing all kinds of garbage about revolution. We decided that someone like Avery wasn’t welcome in our home.”

  “Graves seems to be in a very apocalyptic phase right now.”

  “I think Mead’s home.”

  She jumps up from the kitchen table and strides over to a window in the dining room just in time for headlights from an approaching car to shine through the sheer curtains. I’m in no mood to see my future stepfather, and I’ve pretty much reached my limit for the evening as far as recriminations go. This mess isn’t entirely of my making—others are, but this one belongs mostly to my mother, who’s making a disastrous choice with her life. I don’t need Mead grilling me about Graves or Avery or Gibson, and so I hurry down to the basement under the pretense of having to use the bathroom. The dark cool is a welcome tonic to combat the relentless heat that not even air-conditioning can combat.

  Then my phone rings. The caller ID reveals that it’s…Lola. She always seems to find me in my most desperate hour, displaying an uncanny knack of exploiting my wounds for her amusement. She’d better appreciate the hell she’s put me through. But instead she drops the biggest bomb of all.

  “I’m here,” she announces. “What a pain-in-the-ass drive that was.”

  “Here? Where’s here?”

  “In your stupid hometown.”

  “You’re in Richmond? Lola, this is madness. You shouldn’t have come here.” I pause, though, because the truth is much more nuanced. “I’m glad you did. Where are you?”

  “In a crappy hotel.”

  “Which crappy hotel?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because we need to talk.”

  Silence, perhaps the most deafening sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Its maddening cacophony burns my ears and I wince in pain, wishing she would speak. In an act of mercy, she clears her throat, ending the torment. “About what?”

  “About us.”

  “Us? There’s an us? Since when was there ever an us?”

  I wish I could record her making that same declaration in case I need it for the coming deposition. Not that my defense would ever stand up in a court of law. No us, Dear One? You deny even that? You’ve already drained the swamp and allowed the muck to bake beneath the sun?

  “Okay, we just need to talk about what’s going on. That’s why you drove down here, right?”

  “I drove down here because I was bored out of my mind.”

  “Oh, is that so? Judging from the photos you sent me, you didn’t seem bored.”

  “Oh, him. Seen one, seen ’em all. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Oh my God, this bed feels like it’s made out of
concrete.”

  “What’s the name of the hotel?”

  “Do you even care that I love you?”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “That’s true. How could I ever love someone like you? You’re basically a pervert pretending to be a college professor. How gross is that?”

  “Just tell me where you are and I’ll be there before you find the ice machine.”

  “Let’s meet somewhere. This place sucks. It smells like bleach mixed with urine.”

  “Why did you pick some dump? We have decent hotels in the capital city of Virginia.”

  “It was cheap and a girl has to mind her budget. So tell me where you’ll be tonight and I’ll find you when you least expect it.”

  Ah, one of her favorite games, Hide-and-Go-Seek, culminating in the Surprise Attack. Showing up unannounced at my apartment gave her untold delight, and even when I protested that these rash intrusions were risky, even dangerous, she laughed with the delirium of a lunatic. The converse also seemed to thrill her—not being where she said she’d be, causing me to wait in vain or roam the lonely streets of Ithaca looking for her. Anything that caused me duress excited her ganglia.

  I get an idea. How about going to Gibson’s gig? With Lola? That’s probably one I should jettison, but the words come tumbling out anyway.

  “I was probably going to check out a band at this club called the Dungeon. It’s on Broad Street.”

  “Like I know what Broad Street is.”

  “It’s a major road, Route 250, runs right through downtown. You can’t miss it. The cross street is Allen, I think.”

  “I hooked up with a guy named Allen once. He was slightly above average, but pretty thick. Good stamina.”

  “Thanks for the update.”

  “No problem. I’ll meet you there. The Dungeon. I like the sound of that. Is it a swingers’ club?”

  “No, it’s not. Are you sure you don’t want to talk first? It’ll be loud in there and hard to hear each other.”

  “I love loud places, you know that.”

  “Yeah, but I’m confused. Why did you come down here? That’s a long drive just to hang out with a perverted professor roughly twice your age.”

  Here she pauses. I can picture the naughty smile she likes to flash. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “A surprise?”

  “A big surprise.”

  Mucus thickens in my throat like brown gravy and I worry that I’ll choke on my own disgust. She knows she holds all the cards in this “relationship” and can foist upon me any humiliation that springs from her feverish imagination. I don’t want a big surprise or any surprise; I just want her to leave me alone to live out my days in quiet obscurity.

  “I hate surprises.”

  “You’ll love this one.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  “A clean conscience?”

  “You can’t find one of those on craigslist! Which is where I found my gift to you. And he is special.”

  So Lola has gone online to search out a new lover, apparently for my benefit, and I want to vomit. I really do. I never intended to put myself or her in this situation, and I’m trying to do all I can to make it right. I never asked her to come here. She did so on her own volition, but now she’s upped the ante. She found a guy on craigslist? On the weekend of my mother’s wedding? “Lola, honestly, I feel sick to my stomach right now.”

  “I’ll send you his picture. That’ll cure you.”

  “No! Please don’t! Lola, we really need to talk. Where are you staying?”

  “You’re no fun. You used to be so fun but now you’re a huge downer. You’re getting old, ya know. You have gray pubic hair, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I don’t look in that area of my body anymore. Just tell me the name of the hotel. We really need to sort this out.”

  She sighs in fake resignation. “This craphole is called the Chicory. It’s next to a TGI Fridays.” Well well well…I’ve heard of the Chicory Motel, though I can’t remember quite where it is. And another TGI Fridays beckons me. The Gettysburg police must be dolts, because I haven’t heard one peep from them.

  “I’ll find it. See you soon.”

  She ends the call with no good-bye. She never offers parting words but just dashes off to whatever stimulus happens to catch her eye. It’s quite odd, how she’s handling this spontaneous visit. I still don’t know if she’s actually here. None of her texts include her current location, and so the possibility remains that she’s playing some elaborate game with me while still ensconced in Dahlia’s dorm room back in Ithaca and is sending me on a wild-goose chase. I wouldn’t put it past her.

  15

  I quickly type “Chicory Motel Richmond” into my search engine and up it pops, located on Robin Hood Road in the city’s northern quarter along I-95. It would be a likely stop for a college student who would just pull over once they got close to the destination.

  Chicory also happens to be Lola’s favorite flower.

  We saw one lovely blue clump along our first walk to Buttermilk Falls—we were normal then—at least as normal as I could be with anyone her age. Lola knew so much about these plants, such as how well they grow in nutrient-poor soils and how they bloom just once per day. Kind of like me, was her attempt at self-reflection. According to Lola, chicory proves that something beautiful can emerge from ugliness, and even cracked sidewalks can house a natural wonder.

  We held hands, we kissed, we lounged on rocks like lizards, snacking on pita chips and gurgling back cheap wine. If I could freeze any moment of my life, that would be the one.

  Maybe we can settle things between us. All might not be lost, unless Dahlia has reported me to the dean. In which case it’s over for me. At that point I don’t know, I really don’t.

  What to wear? Lola likes it when I dress up—if I wear a jacket and tie around her, she is liable to turn into a tigress. The more professorial my appearance, the more aroused she becomes. Colleagues have noticed that during the past semester my attire has matured. Gone are the frayed cargo shorts and ripped T-shirts, replaced by tweed or cardigan, often selected by Lola herself. Dressing me in the morning was a hobby for her. Not that she slept over much, because Dahlia would get suspicious, Dahlia the infidel, Lola’s corrupter…it was, after all, Dahlia who set up Lola’s first threesome, with the starting power forward on the basketball team (which had a losing record, I might add), and it was Dahlia who procured all subsequent partners for their amorous entanglements. Not to say Lola didn’t conduct her own recon missions, starting with frat boys from Cornell before moving on to our own campus, eventually targeting students from classes I was teaching, such as Thor…but by now she has to realize that we can’t continue. Surely she’s more reasonable than that. I’ll let her down gently, blame myself, beg her not to ruin my career…

  I guess the clothes I have on will suffice, though she likes my blue blazer least of all, as it reminds her of her father, a domineering sort under whose thumb Lola lived in a tightly circumscribed world. He didn’t allow her to date boys in high school and kept her to an eleven o’clock curfew, thereby unleashing a very embittered and naïve maiden upon the sybaritic excess that is today’s private liberal arts college. Carter LaSalle should have known better, but perhaps his own peccadilloes motivated him to clamp down on his daughter—after all, years before I ever encountered Lola, I’d heard rumors coming from the theater department that Professor LaSalle had turned Preston Hall into a brothel in which he was the sole client, all under the nose of his adoring wife. Tsk-tsk. At one point Bev asked if any students had ever thrown themselves at me, and I told her that only a fool would risk so much for so little. While we were married, I ignored at least five lusty females, all graduating seniors, who basically issued me a blank slate to ravish them at my leisure. Not once—do you hear me, Bev?—not once did I indulge. And still she divorced me, virtuous Eddie.

  I must te
ll my mother of my plans so that she won’t worry if she learns I’m gone, and so I dutifully troop upstairs and find her and Mead conversing in the kitchen. By the sound of their voices, things have settled down somewhat.

  “There he is,” says Mead. “Sorry you got dragged into all of this nonsense. I swear things aren’t usually this nuts around here.”

  I doubt that, but hold my tongue. “No word from Graves?”

  “Nothing. First thing in the morning, all the stuff in the basement is going into storage. I’m renting a U-Haul truck and I’m hoping you can lend me a hand if you’re not busy.”

  “Sure thing.” I’d rather get a root canal than abet his quasi-criminal enterprise. Saying no isn’t an option, however.

  “Thanks, Eddie! You’re the best!” My mother beams with pride.

  “It shouldn’t take long,” Mead continues. “An hour, tops. I should’ve done it a long time ago but I had my own selfish reasons not to. You live and you learn, right? Hey—my sister really liked you. She thought you were a total hoot.”

  “Oh, great. She was a cool chick, no doubt.”

  “Are you going back out?” my mother asks hopefully. “Maybe you should call her and invite her along. She just got out of a bad relationship.”

  “The worst!” Mead adds. “The guy treated her horribly.”

  “He was very full of himself.”

  This is a hard sell. It’s like I’m buying a used car with lots of mileage but with a good maintenance record. What the heck, I’ll take Paula for a test drive. Lola loves complications. Makes the game that much more interesting for her.

  “I was thinking of seeing Gibson’s band. Paula is welcome to join me if she’s into that kind of thing.”

  “Gibson’s band, huh?” Mead shakes his head warily. “You’re a braver man than me, Eddie. You can’t pay me to watch that. I don’t know about Paula. She tends to be a bit more adventurous than the rest of the family.”

  “Even the Beatles had to start somewhere.”

  “I’m sure Paula will think it’s sweet of you to ask her,” my mother gushes. Somehow, despite the odds, we’ve become one big happy family. Not even David Copperfield could’ve pulled off that illusion, and ours promises to be just as fake as one of his schmaltzy Vegas shows.