Tell Me Lies

by Carola Lovering

  After work I went for a run along the East River path. The sky turned a dusky gray and I cut the run short when I felt raindrops prickling my arms.

  Bree was making fish tacos when I got back to the apartment. I checked my cell but Stephen hadn’t called or texted.

  I took a hot shower and let the day wash off me. Afterward I combed my hair in front of the full-length mirror and looked at myself. My body was still lean but packed with more muscle from running. My breasts were bigger. I didn’t hate it. I wasn’t going to let myself go or anything—I’d still never look at a carbohydrate in the same thoughtless way as before—but I couldn’t run fast if I didn’t eat.

  I put on sweatpants and Marilyn’s sweater. Bree had made me a plate of tacos, and I joined her on the couch. I was still anxious but starving after my run, and I devoured the tacos.

  “Bree.”

  “Yeah?” She didn’t peel her eyes away from Mad Men.

  I wanted to tell her about Stephen and the whole dinner/date ordeal; I needed a dose of Bree’s pragmatism. But I decided against it when I remembered she might tell Jackie, who still wasn’t happy about my dating Stephen.

  “Never mind.”

  After Bree went to bed I rinsed the dishes in the kitchen. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the dishwasher.

  I climbed into bed and stared at my phone, willing him to call. When it finally rang it was CJ calling, and I was so disappointed I whined out loud to no one and let it go to voice mail.

  I had to hear from Stephen. I wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise.

  I tried to read Cutting for Stone where I’d left off, but I couldn’t concentrate. I read the same sentence ten times. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I sent a text.

  LUCY: What’s up?

  When he answered several minutes later, relief filled me to the bone.

  STEPHEN: Still in the library, I’m swamped. Let’s talk tomorrow.

  I tossed and turned through the night, waking every hour. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off with him. The next day at work I couldn’t focus; dread loomed over me like a dark cloud. Melissa eyed me suspiciously and I put my phone away.

  When I left the office at dusk I was so anxious I was practically shaking. Out on the street I finally checked my phone, and my stomach sank in another round of disappointment. Still nothing from Stephen. I decided to call him. It was already Wednesday and my parents were coming in for dinner the next night. Stephen still hadn’t met my dad, so the four of us were going to Gramercy Tavern. CJ was already annoying me with questions about what she should wear and whether I thought she should drive or take the train to the city.

  “Hi.” He picked up, but sounded bothered.

  “Hey.” I wanted to jump through the phone and punch him in the face.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just saying hello. I’ve barely talked to you in the past couple of days.”

  “I haven’t talked to anyone in the past couple of days,” he replied defensively. “I’ve been cooped up in the library writing this fucking brief.”

  “You could at least text me. You were supposed to call me last night.”

  “I’m really fucking busy, Lucy.”

  “I know that, Stephen. But what the hell? If we’re really trying to make this work like we say we are, then you can’t just leave me in the dark and act like an asshole because you feel like it. And I’m really fucking busy, too, by the way. You’re not the only one.”

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I’m just stressed.”

  “Whatever. We can talk about it later. I’m checking in about dinner tomorrow. It’s Gramercy Tavern at seven thirty, okay?”

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  “You’re not coming.” My stomach dropped.

  “I can’t. I’m not even a quarter way through this brief and it’s due early next week. There’s no way I’ll be able to take a break for dinner tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t understand. Is everything okay with your mom?”

  “My mom?”

  “Is she still in the hospital?”

  “No. I told you that was nothing. This is not about my mom. This is about work.”

  “Okay, well, I thought you wanted to meet my dad and ask him about law review. But whatever, we’ll reschedule again.”

  “Are you trying to blame me for this? You’re the one who’s been so fucking weird about me meeting your family. You don’t want me to meet them. Admit it. You know they won’t like me.”

  “Are you joking? You already met my mom. It was fine.”

  “It wasn’t fine. She clearly thinks I’m not good enough for her precious perfect privately educated daughter. It was written all over her face, Luce. Wake up.”

  “What the hell, Stephen? Why are you being such a dick? Don’t turn this on me. This is your fault.” I felt close to tears, practically shouting on the street.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered finally. “Can we talk about this later?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Tell your parents I’m sorry. It was bad planning on my part. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I really am sorry, Lucy.”

  “You’re still coming to Sagaponack this weekend, though? For the half marathon.” My voice was small.

  Stephen sighed again in a way that made me cringe at myself. I could palpably feel his annoyance at my neediness through the phone.

  “Possibly,” he said. “I’d like to, but I have to see how much work I get done. This brief is a huge part of my legal writing grade and it’s due next week.”

  “You can work in the Hamptons. You can go to the library or work at Lydia’s. We won’t bother you.” I hated myself for sounding so desperate.

  “I’ll see. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.” He hung up abruptly.

  I felt more alone and dejected than I could stomach. It was before seven and the light was already slate gray. I shivered in my thin jacket and could feel winter coming, the cold, lingering stretch of it. I called CJ and explained that Stephen had to reschedule because his mother was in the hospital. She asked a million frantic questions and I made up answers to all of them.

  Bree was at the apartment when I got home, already packing for the weekend. She talked my ear off about hydrating properly and what we should eat for dinner to carbo-load the night before the race. I managed one-word answers and she appeared in my doorway with a serious expression on her face.

  “If you’re nervous about the race, don’t be,” she said. “You’ve been running more than I have.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Nothing. Work stuff.”

  “Melissa again?”

  “Yeah. Same old.”

  “She’s such a bitch. She’s not even your boss.”

  “I know.”

  “Is Stephen taking the Jitney out with us tomorrow?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know if he can come anymore, actually. He has a brief due Monday.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  “We’ll see. He might come Saturday.” I forced a smile.

  I didn’t sleep all night. I couldn’t understand why Stephen wasn’t texting me. He always called or texted to say good night if we weren’t spending it together. The hole of angst in my gut was growing larger by the second. I wished I could rewind time to just a week ago when Stephen had surprised me with last-minute Sigur Rós tickets and a bouquet of pale pink roses. What could have gone wrong in a week?

  Maybe it was his mother and he just wasn’t telling me. His mother was bipolar—bipolar I, the most severe type—and maybe there was something he wasn’t admitting about the real reason she’d been in the hospital. My mind spun through the night with various scenarios. Every time I did drift off I dreamed about Stephen. In one of them we were having dinner at a fancy restaurant; in another we were sleeping e
ntwined on the beach in Sagaponack, under the stars. I hated all of them because I woke up and he wasn’t there and it was just me, hot underneath my sheets, my eyes stinging from light spurts of sleep.

  The next day I struggled through work again. I kept my phone on my desk in plain sight, practically hooked to my bloodstream. With each passing minute that he didn’t call, it seemed less and less likely that he would, and by the time I was hauling my weekend bag toward the Forty-Fourth Street Jitney stop on Friday evening, I knew I wasn’t going to hear from him.

  The Jitney rolled out of Manhattan and headed east, leaving the city in its dust. Lydia and Bree passed out almost instantly, leaving me alone with my spiraling thoughts. I pulled out my phone. In between my misery were surges of anger. This wasn’t fair. I typed another text.

  LUCY: Is everything ok? What did you decide about the weekend? Call me.

  I made an effort not to sound as angry as I felt, because maybe there was a real problem with his mother. Still, it was Friday night and the half marathon was starting in twelve hours. A week ago he’d said he was making a sign for me—LUCY RUNNING IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS.

  I pulled out Cutting for Stone and didn’t bother opening it before shoving the fat paperback back into my purse.

  I checked my phone every thirty seconds like someone with Tourette’s syndrome. At nine thirty the bus pulled into the Watermill stop near Sagaponack.

  I hadn’t been out east since Labor Day weekend. Now that it was October the air was much cooler, the streets strangely empty.

  The inside of Lydia’s grandmother’s house was stuffy from several weeks of sitting unoccupied with closed windows. I took in the familiar, woody scent of the kitchen and felt gutted, like I might crack open with sadness. Stephen and I had spent many summer nights at this house, in this kitchen—we’d covered the big wooden table in newspaper for crab dinners with Helen and Bree and other friends and relatives of Lydia’s who visited. I’d sat on his lap during games of Cards Against Humanity and Bananagrams around that table. One afternoon while everyone was still at the beach, we’d had sex on it.

  I ran my hands over the smooth walnut tabletop where we’d been just weeks before. My fingers traced the indentations and knots of the wood, and my heart hurt so much I could barely stand it. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering? Why wasn’t he here with me?

  It took me hours to fall asleep but when I finally did I dreamed of a brand-new BMW station wagon, its silver hood gleaming. Sets of ambiguous hands held thick, soapy sponges that wiped down the sides and its windows and surfaces. A black cloth polished the blue-and-white logo on the hood until it squeaked. The car started but instead of headlights there were Stephen’s eyes, scorching green, and then they became Dr. Wattenbarger’s, gray like the sea when it rains.

  And you, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, are a BMW.

  I woke up in a full sweat to the sound of my 5:00 a.m. alarm and a light rain falling on the tin roof above my head.

  Lydia and Bree were already in the kitchen making coffee and toasting bagels while cheerfully discussing their running playlists. Bree handed me half a cinnamon raisin bagel and I spread a layer of cream cheese over its crispy surface.

  We left the house just after six and drove down Montauk Highway toward East Hampton. The rain had stopped and the sun was a yellow line burning the horizon, illuminating the wide green cornfields in a buttery wash. I rolled my window down and the earthy scent of dew and manure filled the car.

  Lydia seemed collected, but I could tell Bree was nervous the way she kept tucking loose strands of white-blond hair behind her ears with her toothpick arms. None of us had run 13.1 miles before, and I had been nervous, too. But now any nervousness I’d felt had morphed into the mind-numbing dread that seized every cell in my body.

  As Lydia sped along the empty highway, she and Bree chatted effortlessly up front, like best old friends, even though I’d just introduced them over the summer.

  “You’ve barely said a word since we left Manhattan,” Lydia said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. She turned down the radio, the same way CJ did whenever she wanted to talk in the car, as if it were impossible to have a conversation over the slightest amount of volume.

  “Yeah,” Bree stated in agreement. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “I’m just nervous about the race,” I lied.

  “Me, too,” Bree said. “But think about how much we’ve been training. We’ll be fine. Hey, what’d Stephen end up doing? Is he coming out today?”

  “No, he had to stay in the city and work. He has that big brief due at school.”

  “That’s a bummer. Sorry, Luce.” She looked back at me with a small frown. Unlike Jackie, Bree never questioned what I told her. She expected honesty the way you expect water to flood from a faucet, and around her I sometimes felt shady and deceptive.

  The half marathon was a blur. My legs felt heavy and dull as I pounded along the rain-slicked roads of East Hampton. For the last five miles of the run my calves and feet ached so much that I forgot about Stephen for forty-five whole minutes. I crossed the finish line in one hour and fifty-eight minutes and was greeted by Lydia and Bree, who had finished the race side by side in an hour fifty.

  “Luce!” Bree shrieked. “We did it! Let’s get a picture!”

  Lydia’s boyfriend and some of her friends met us at the finish line. They were mostly city kids I knew from the summer, but I couldn’t have been less in the mood to socialize. The sun was shining and only a few clouds hung low in the sky. I wished it were still raining. Everyone wanted to get breakfast sandwiches and beer and head to the beach. We got our stuff from the baggage tent and when I pulled out my phone my stomach was such a mess of knots I was hunched over like someone with a hernia. I scanned through my messages, my eyes running over the congratulatory texts and missed calls from friends and home and Georgia and CJ. Nothing, nothing, nothing from Stephen. Still nothing. Maybe he’d lost his phone. That was a legitimate possibility. Maybe I should get in touch with Carl and make sure everything was okay.

  We stopped at the deli before heading to the beach. It had unfortunately turned into a perfect day—every lingering cloud had disappeared from the spotless blue sky by the time we laid our towels out over the sand, and the temperature was uncharacteristically warm for October. I forced two bites of a bacon egg and cheese, but it tasted like rubber. I finished a beer and felt dizzy with depression. I knew if I had another I’d try calling Stephen again. I watched everybody go swimming in the ocean.

  Jackie called.

  “I can’t believe you guys ran thirteen miles. You’re insane.” The sound of her voice made me feel a little better.

  “It wasn’t that bad. You could do it if you really wanted.”

  “Not a chance.” Jackie laughed. “But I’m proud of you guys. Is Bree there?”

  “She’s swimming.”

  “In October?”

  “It’s really warm here. It’s weird.”

  “Well, tell her congratulations for me.”

  “I will. I miss you, Jack.”

  “I miss you, too, Luce. You need to come visit like, now.”

  “I wish. I’m so poor at the moment. Maybe I can convince CJ to buy me a ticket and come for New Year’s.”

  “You need to. You have to see our spot in Santa Monica.”

  “I know. I miss California. Also, Jack, I’ve been meaning to tell you . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I’ve been meaning to say that I’m sorry. About Stephen. I know it’s messed things up between us. I know you think I did the wrong thing and I know you don’t want to talk to me about it and the thing is, maybe you’re—”

  “Lucy, that’s crazy. It hasn’t messed things up between us. You’re my best friend.”

  “I know.” I felt my voice crack. I dug my toes into the sand.

  “Seriously, Luce. Stephen might not be my favorite person but I’m not going to love you any less because you’re with him
. And besides, Bree says you’ve been really happy lately. She says Stephen is really nice to you. Which I guess is weird for me to imagine but I dunno, maybe you were right. I don’t really know him. The times we hung out I was probably coked out and being a bitch. We did too much coke at that school, don’t you think? It got bad at points . . . and Pippa wasn’t the greatest influence. I told her she had to cut it out once we got to LA and she hasn’t done it since graduation, did you know that? We all just needed to grow up. Anyway, I’m getting off track. What I meant to say is that maybe you were right when you said you and Stephen had bad timing before. Maybe people can change . . .” She was rambling. She sounded a little tipsy.

  “But, Jackie—”

  “Luce, I just want you to be happy. Nothing else matters. I have to go. Sorry, Pip and I are drinking mimosas and we have to go to this brunch thing . . . but I love you. So does Pip.”

  I hung up with Jackie as Bree scrambled out of the water, her tiny body shivering.

  “Holy shit, the ocean is freezing.” She grabbed a towel. “Who was that?”

  “Jackie. She says to tell you congratulations.”

  “You look pale,” Bree said, drying off. “And you’re not talking to anyone. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t feel well. I should go back to Lydia’s and . . . rest.”

  The world tipped. I saw Bree saying something to Lydia. I heard Lydia’s voice from a very long way away. “Lucy, take the car keys. Go back to the house and lie down.”

  Back at the Sagaponack house I took a shower, then buried myself under the covers in the guest room bed. It was too sunny, even with the shades closed. I felt guilty and lame and weak for being indoors on such a beautiful day, but being at the beach had been unbearable. All I could do was lie in the fetal position, a metal weight inside me, obliterating me to the core.

  I checked my phone for the billionth time. I tried to be practical. I assessed the facts. The last interaction I’d had with Stephen had been the phone call on Thursday evening, nearly forty-eight hours earlier. Since then I’d called him four times, left two voice mails and sent seven texts, all of them unanswered. He’d probably lost his phone. There was actually no other explanation. But then why hadn’t he emailed me, or called me from a friend’s phone?