A Field Guide to Deception

by Jill Malone

Liv wasn’t allowed in the water, but would sit on the sideline with a battered copy of Outside, and cheer for him. He could hear her voice, like a hum through the water. Today he was going off the diving board. Stacy had promised.

  “There’s my boy!” She yelled as Simon hurried poolside. “Are you ready, Simon? We’re going to have a super lesson. Hop in here, buddy!”

  The water, though heated, always surprised him. To submerge felt like he was being swallowed. For half an hour he cupped his palms, kicked his legs, reached with his arms, kept his head down and his eyes squeezed shut. He pulled through the water as though he had a destination.

  “Yes, Simon!” Stacy hollered.

  And he stroked and stroked. He stroked though her voice diminished. He stroked and heard Liv, very clearly, roaring his name. He knew their voices carried to him, that they weren’t nearby. Still, when his hands touched the side, and he hoisted himself up, he was surprised to see Stacy on the opposite side of the pool.

  “Simon, you did it. You swam across the whole pool. You’re super amazing. You swam all by yourself.”

  He clutched the side of the pool, grinning. Liv was hopping up and down, and Stacy had submerged and streaked toward him like a dolphin. She lifted him from the water, and set him on the side of the pool, then pulled up beside him.

  “You ready for the diving board?”

  Simon nodded.

  “I only let my brave, super strong swimmers jump off the diving board.”

  Simon looked up at her. On the other side of the pool, Liv had stood, and paced along with them now to the deep end.

  His first few steps on the diving board, Stacy held his hand and walked the pavement next to him. “Liv’s going to come stand by the diving board, and I’m going to get back in the water, and I’ll tell you when to jump, OK? I’ll be in the water, and you’ll jump toward me, OK. I’ll be right in the water, waiting for you.”

  Simon blinked rapidly. He looked at Liv, his heart somersaulting in his chest.

  “Alright, Simon!” Stacy called from the water. “Take two more steps and look at me.”

  He took two steps. The board dipped beneath him as though it had inhaled.

  “You’re going to jump right to me!” She yelled. “Right to me, Simon. You can do it!”

  He heard Liv behind him, and Stacy in the water, chanting, rooting, cheering. He heard his name like an anthem, and leapt off the shivering board. Water closed around him a moment later, and then her hands.

  Claire had stopped by Patrick’s office to give him copies of payroll reports. She would start paying quarterly taxes herself in the New Year, but for now, it was a relief to let him manage the forms and payments. She should have blown him off, and gone to Simon’s swim lesson, but she’d already re-scheduled with him twice, and guilt had compelled her to come.

  The reception area was deserted. Claire stepped into the hallway, lined with more photographs of isolated mountaintops, and called. Patrick appeared a moment later.

  “Claire, it’s a pleasure to see you. How’s business?” He wore dark blue jeans, a rugby shirt, and his glasses atop his head. He touched the small of her back, and kissed her.

  “Wildly busy. We’ve had a couple of offers to open a second location downtown.”

  “That’s fantastic. What does Bailey think?”

  “She thinks one café is plenty, and I agree with her.”

  “Well, it’s early yet to consider expansion.”

  “Yes.”

  “You look good.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Here’s your report.”

  “Great. How about a quick bite? We could grab some appetizers around the corner at Zola?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I’m eating with Liv and Simon.”

  “How about coffee? Lattes at Conti’s?”

  “No, thanks. I’m meeting them, so I only had time to drop this to you, and now I really have to go.”

  “Claire,” he said. “You’re always rushing off.”

  “If we weren’t busy, we couldn’t afford you.”

  Patrick stretched his arm to her hair. He pulled gently, and Claire stood, regarding him.

  “This,” she said, “isn’t going to happen.”

  “Claire.”

  “Patrick, this isn’t going to happen.”

  He stepped back. “Thanks for dropping this off.”

  “Come by the café this week. You won’t believe the éclairs.”

  They ordered Simon a colossal burger and fries at Frank’s Diner. They’d let him choose the restaurant, knowing he’d opt for the train-car diner.

  “One huckleberry milkshake for the high diver,” the waiter said. “With extra cherries.”

  “Did you really jump off the diving board?” Claire said again. “How did I miss that? I can’t believe it.”

  “I should have had a camera,” Liv said. “He was the most fearless, amazing fellow. You’ve never seen anything like it. He threw himself right into the air.”

  “Were you frightened?” Claire asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You were frightened, and you still jumped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you jump again next week so I can see you?”

  “Yeah, OK.”

  “I can’t believe I missed it.”

  “And he swam across the pool alone.”

  “What?” Claire said.

  “Yeah, the whole thing.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “He was brilliant. Weren’t you, Simon?”

  He drank the last of his milkshake, and asked for another.

  Drake steamed the soymilk, added shots, and stirred. It was ten in the morning, and Drake had called Liv down from the attic for coffee and éclairs.

  “These are masterful,” Drake said. “The woman’s blessed.”

  The custard took Liv to a train station, herself in a dress and pinafore, her hair wound into braids and pinned up. She might have been four. Her mother on the bench beside her, the luggage pressed against their legs. Liv had no idea where they were. She and her mother, halving an éclair, awaiting a train.

  “I asked Bailey,” Drake said, “why she was so mad at you.”

  “Yeah? What’d she say?”

  “She said she wasn’t, and then she got mad at me.”

  Liv shrugged.

  “Do you have a theory?” Drake asked.

  “I don’t, but clearly you do.”

  “I think Bailey wants a family—a child and a partner and a mortgage and a pension. I think she’s wanted that life for a long time, and somehow, you walked right into everything she wanted, and—from her perspective—it seemed effortless. Maybe even something you took on reluctantly. I think she’s mad that you have it, and mad that you don’t value it, like she does.”

  Liv sipped her coffee. “Value” might just be unfortunate diction. “Are you hypothesizing?”

  “Entirely.”

  “I think all of that is true. I don’t feel like I’ve earned Simon or Claire, or the life I share with them.”

  Drake looked her over, said, “You’re mad.”

  Liv finished her latte.

  “Why are you mad?” Drake asked.

  “This has nothing the fuck to do with Bailey. She doesn’t get to be mad about this. She doesn’t get to judge me anymore.”

  Liv stood up and walked outside with her cigarette. She wanted to kick the brickwork, tear up the dormant trees in the front yard. She wanted a dirty fight, blood on her knuckles, a swollen lip. She wanted to call her mother.

  “I’m reading,” her mother said, and Liv could picture it. The stiff blue chair beside the arched front window, the light frail, the book propped on her knee. “A novel about a basketball team in Montana. It’s pleasant.”

  “Do you remember a train trip we took when I was four or five?”

  “A train trip?” Her mother’s voice sounded distracted.

  “We were eating éclairs.”

  “No,” her mot
her sighed, and Liv heard her readjust the phone. “Why would we take a train anywhere?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t sound like us.”

  No. It didn’t.

  “How do you feel?” Liv asked.

  “Worn out. How are you, Olivia?”

  “I’m well.”

  “And Christmas? What have you decided? Do we get to meet them?”

  Liv kicked at the lowest cement step. “We’re so busy here. I’ve got several jobs going. And Claire’s got the café.”

  “You’re going to be working on Christmas? Really? You can’t take two days? A flight over and back?”

  “Look, I just—”

  “Thanks so much for calling,” her mother said. “Take care now.”

  “Mom—” the call ended.

  Liv closed her phone, slid it back into her coat pocket. She lit another cigarette; stared at the grey sky, grey snow, the grimy cars rolling past.

  The stone house seemed to strain against the very air, the wind battered against the windows, howled at the door. Liv and Simon set the table; it was six-thirty. Simon helped himself to some butter, and slathered his baguette. All three of them wore fleece vests. Claire had broiled fish, served green beans and couscous. Liv had brought home a bottle of wine, and Simon’s favorite Odwalla juice.

  “What did you do today, Simon?” Liv asked.

  “I baked cookies,” Simon said, licking butter off the baguette so that he could apply another coat.

  “What kind of cookies?”

  “Oh, every kind.”

  “What about you?” Claire said. “How was your day?”

  Liv tapped her green bean against her plate. “I talked to my mother.”

  “How is she?”

  “Abrupt. Distant. And I can’t remember how it used to be, talking to her. I can’t remember something better than this.”

  Claire tore her bread into chunks, studying each piece in her hand. Liv’s voice had broken on the word better.

  “Drake bought éclairs for breakfast, and when I bit into mine I remembered waiting at a train station with my mother. I called to ask her if she could remember where we were going, and she said she couldn’t, and that it didn’t sound like us. I feel like an alien with my own mother.”

  Simon set his bread down on his plate, and looked up at Liv. She’d bowed her head, and gripped her fork in her left hand. Her body seemed to tremble.

  “Never mind, Liv,” he said.

  She laid her fork down, and rubbed at her hair. All those girls, one after another, and she’d never felt vulnerable; they’d provided a kind of stability: the inevitability of each of them. She knew that one would follow another. But now, in this house, with this woman, and this child, what could she rely on? Where were the assurances? All she knew anymore was vulnerability.

  The previous afternoon, they had taken Simon to his pediatrician to discuss the socialization concerns of his old daycare. The doctor had laughed when they’d told him. Autism. The word spoken with defiance by both of them, as though they dared the doctor to agree. He hadn’t agreed, rather he’d proclaimed Simon ahead of the developmental trends, and thriving. Regardless, Liv had left the office troubled, the concerns of parenting boundless, the feedback so various as to be completely discordant.

  She’d wanted to call her mother then. To tell her that she understood—that she finally understood how much of it was guesswork, how much of it was worry. She wanted her mother to know them, Claire and Simon, but that meant more vulnerability still.

  Simon, staring at her, waited until she started eating again, and then he picked up his baguette.

  “I came to this house,” Claire said, “to vanish. I really thought I could disappear in Spokane with my crazy mushroom-hunting aunt. I figured I’d live here for a year, save money, move someplace cool like Austin or San Francisco. I’d been here a couple of weeks, and my aunt made dinner, and gin and tonics, and we ate and talked, and suddenly, I realized it was two in the morning. We’d sat up half the night, drinking and picking at our plates, and talking. It was like that for the rest of her life.”

  Claire’s leg shook beneath the table. “It was never a struggle with her. She loved me. It never felt like she held love from me, or flipped it off and on. She talked to me, and taught me, and nurtured me. I didn’t even know I was being nurtured, really, but I was. And when she died, when she died, all of that was gone. Overnight almost.

  “I didn’t know how painful it would be. Not just her death, everything: our conversations, and her work, this friendship, this mothering. My whole experience with her was an adventure.”

  Liv nodded, Yes, the nurturing adventure. Good fun, until your mom called you a predator.

  Sprawled on the sofa, they drank hot chocolate in front of the fire. Simon brought his books in, and they all three took turns reading. Liv read Winnie the Pooh while Simon brushed his teeth. Claire tucked him in.

  “Would you drink wine?” she asked Liv.

  “If you’ll have a glass.”

  “My mother wrote this letter to my aunt when I came here.” Claire handed the letter to Liv, after she’d given her a glass of wine.

  Liv read: “We admire what you have taken on. We are grateful. Claire will always hold herself apart. She is steadfast without loyalty, and loving without demonstration of feeling. She is, always, patient and controlled. You may find her difficult. We believe that she is difficult. We hope that you will understand her better than we. We hope she will thrive there with you.”

  Liv read the letter through again, looked up without comment.

  “I found it when I went through her things.”

  Liv shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. It’s not a letter I can imagine writing about Simon.”

  “It’s not a letter you would write about Simon.”

  “I hope not. Dee was always generous with love. I don’t think that’s true of many people. I’m not sure it’s true of me.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Liv.” Claire took the letter back, folded it, ran her fingers along the creases. “I wrote all of my aunt’s field guides. She did the research, but I wrote the books that made her famous. Simon’s dad is in a boy band. He’s a bassist, and I slept with him. He never knew I was pregnant. I have no idea why I told you I was artificially inseminated. Shame, I think.”

  She crumpled the letter, threw it into the fire, and then went on: “When I was twenty, I stole $117,000 from this guy I used to nanny for in Seattle. I found the money in a broken cupboard in the laundry room, and didn’t even hesitate. He assumed his wife swiped it when she took the kids and left him. Dee invested the money for me, and we made a fucking killing.”

  Liv cocked her head. Imagined crime-spree Claire, the ghostwriting action figure. “Anything else?”

  “I slept with Bailey, in the summer. That day you got out of the car.”

  Ah, that one stung a bit. Liv took a sip of wine, held it, swallowed.

  “Say something,” Claire said.

  “I’m not mad.”

  “How?”

  “How what?” Liv asked.

  “How aren’t you mad? I’m a thief and a liar. How is it you aren’t mad?”

  “I’ve done things I’m ashamed of. Things I wish I hadn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t. Of course you’re mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Stop saying that.” Claire stood up. She drank her wine in a gulp, and pulled at her hair. She’d done it. She’d fessed to everything—and now, exposed, vulnerable, frightened—she wanted to take it all back. She wanted her secrets, and her crimes; she wanted to get away with it all.

  “I’m in love with you,” Liv said.

  Claire heard, and her eyes stung. She felt Liv behind her.

  “You’ve changed everything,” Liv said.

  Claire had turned, and backed away now, as though Liv were pointing a gun at her.

&
nbsp; “We suck at this, you and I,” Liv said. “We suck at love. In the end, I’ll make you cry. In the end, the whole fucking thing will be grim and painful, and you’ll hate me. I love you anyway. I can’t help it.”

  Liv neither moved nor blinked, though the firelight threw shadows around them. Claire’s eyes closed, and her head felt heavy and dreamy. In the end, she thought, we’ll both die. All of this will end, like Dee, running along the roadside, and then a body in the snow. She leaned forward until Liv’s arms wrapped around her, and she willed them both to live.

  Twenty-eight

  Oh and fuck you too

  The letter came from Liv’s mother several days later. It began with a description of the weather forecast, already begrudging the projected spell of rain, and then gave a recap of Liv’s father’s projects, and their nearness to completion. A bright letter, and the first Liv had received since her mother’s diagnosis. And the third paragraph: “We took a train to Montreal, you and I. You were nearly four. We were leaving to spend the summer with my mother. I had thought, at the time, that you and I might stay in Montreal. Your father came, at summer’s end, and we returned with him. My mother told me that you were the most solitary child she had ever met. It was true. You played outdoors by yourself all day. They kept goats, and you fed them. Those goats followed you everywhere; you’d laugh when they nibbled at your clothes. I’d forgotten about the éclair.”

  Liv thought she remembered the goats, milking them, the coarse toughness of their bodies, but it might all be invention now. The news that her mother had contemplated leaving her father did not surprise Liv, though the telling did. This was a revelatory time. All these months, she had thought Claire virtuous. What a relief then, to find she wasn’t.

  Liv finished her letter, and her cigarette, and returned indoors. In the kitchen, Simon sang his version of nursery rhymes along with the CD. “Merry, merry, merry, merry. Life is a big dream.”

  “Come color with me, please,” he said.

  “What are we coloring?”

  “Trains.”

  “Ah,” she said, and sat down beside him. “Then I’ll need my purple crayon.”

  Claire emptied the dishwasher, then filled it for another load, and set it growling. They’d been slammed all morning and afternoon. She and Bailey were at the point where they could figure, within eighty dollars, their numbers for the day.