Tell Me Lies

by Carola Lovering

  I pulled my face out of the sink and turned off the faucet. No.

  My eyes still closed, I saw Macy twirling a lock of long red hair around her finger. He sort of has a girlfriend. He says they’re breaking up and that he’s not into her, but we’re keeping it really quiet for now. It’s shitty, I know. I wish I didn’t like him so much.

  No. It was impossible. I kept my eyes sealed shut and clenched my jaw and dug into the depth of my brain for other memories of that night. I’d been with Antonia and her brother, but whose party had it been? In Bayville? Who were we with? Kids from what school?

  And then I saw Macy glancing back from the doorway, gesturing to the beer I was offering her from my hand. Can’t. I’m driving, remember?

  And then she was gone.

  I grit my teeth and burrowed deeper. Tried harder. But there was nothing else from that night. Nothing. Only too many vodka pulls, and Macy, and blankness. Maybe I hadn’t seen Macy at all. Maybe I’d made the whole thing up in my psycho crazy head. And then Bree was shouting something in front of me, and when I opened my eyes she was staring at me like I had three heads.

  “Lucy? It’s Stephen, isn’t it? What happened tonight?”

  Stephen. The bar. Tonight.

  Bree gave me water and helped me into boxers and Marilyn’s sweater while I told her everything. I was suddenly so tired and slurring the words, but she nodded, her hazel eyes kind and understanding.

  “I wish you had told me before,” she said. “That explains why you were sick last weekend.”

  “Well, I wasn’t actually sick.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry, Bree . . .”

  When I woke hours later, orange light filtered through the blinds. I heard the sound of my dresser drawers opening and closing, and when I looked up I saw CJ in my room, throwing clothes into a canvas tote.

  “CJ?”

  “Morning, Luce,” she said casually, as if it were perfectly normal for her to be standing in my bedroom in the East Village at the crack of dawn.

  “What are you doing?”

  She walked over to the bed and leaned down to kiss my forehead.

  “Bree said you had a tough night.”

  “Bree called you?”

  “Yes. She was worried.”

  My head felt muddled as I tried to absorb everything. My thoughts shot to my phone. Maybe Stephen had texted me telling me he’d made a huge mistake. He probably had.

  “Where’s my phone?” I scanned the side table and the floor next to the bed.

  “This it?” CJ took the phone from my dresser and handed it to me. There were no texts or calls from Stephen, and my stomach plunged in a new wave of misery.

  “What are you doing?” I asked again.

  “Packing you a weekend bag,” she said. “We’ll go up to the Cape. You can clear your head. Maybe the water will still be warm enough for a swim. Salt water fixes everything, you know.”

  “What? Why are you doing this, CJ?”

  She looked at me from across the room, her eyes a strident aquamarine blue. She looked irritatingly perfect in a black cashmere sweater and some expensive Parisian scarf.

  “Because right now you need to get out of this apartment. We’ll get away and be by the ocean and talk. We’ll figure this whole thing out. Now get up and get dressed. I don’t want to hit traffic. Are you wearing Marilyn’s sweater? I love that you still wear that. She would’ve adored you.”

  I ducked my head into Bree’s room but she was still sleeping when we left the apartment at quarter past seven. CJ cruised up the FDR, which was empty so early on a Saturday morning. The low-hanging sun shimmered over the East River, casting glittery flecks on the water’s surface. It was a chilly morning and CJ cranked the heat. She turned on an old mixed CD. Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back Again” filled the car.

  The music was too much; it reminded me of being a little girl riding in the back seat while CJ sang along to the lyrics, the same way she was now.

  “ ‘Been down one time, been down two times, I’m never going back again.’ ” She smiled. “I forgot how much I love this song.”

  Tears streamed down my face, so many that I couldn’t see.

  CJ reached over and squeezed my hand. “He broke your heart, didn’t he?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “You loved him. I had the feeling you did, but I wasn’t sure until now. I’m so sorry, my girl.”

  We zoomed along the Triborough Bridge across the river. I wanted her to let go of my hand. I hated her. What right did she have to be my so-called rescuer? What right did Bree have calling her?

  I leaned my head against the window. The sun was too bright; it stabbed my eyes. I squinted and watched the city disappear until the Empire State Building was as small as a thumbtack. I was glad to be out of Manhattan.

  “You’ll feel better tomorrow, I promise.” CJ turned down the music.

  I stayed silent.

  “You can talk to me, you know.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s at home. Georgia’s home, too.”

  “She is?”

  “She has Monday off for Columbus Day.”

  “Why aren’t they coming to Chatham?”

  “Georgia wants to catch up with friends in the city. And I figured it would be nice for you and me to have some alone time. We haven’t really had that lately, you know?”

  I said nothing.

  We sped by tiny houses that sat right on the highway, houses smaller than our garage. I’d always felt sorry for people who had to live in houses like that.

  “Sass, you learn almost everything from your relationships,” CJ said. “They’re how you figure out who you are.”

  I couldn’t think of a response that wouldn’t keep the conversation going.

  She went on. “I know you wanted it to work out with Stephen, and I know you thought it would.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “But the thing is,” CJ continued. “Love—real love—isn’t something you construct or hope or imagine or plan for the future. Love is something you live and feel in real time, in every single moment, big or small. It’s reciprocal and often unglamorous. But we bank on it because it’s what gives life meaning.”

  “That sounds a little underwhelming for love.”

  “I wouldn’t call it underwhelming.” She laughed. “But I see what you mean. Maybe it’s not always the most exciting thing in the world. But I guess that’s what happens when you trust someone completely.”

  “Excuse me?” I picked my head up from the window and sat up straight as a pole, as a buried switch flipped within me.

  “What?” CJ glanced at me. Her eyes were covered in huge dark sunglasses that slid down the bridge of her enviable nose.

  “Trust? Really?” I suddenly felt more alert than I had in days.

  “Yes, trust. You can’t have a relationship without trust. It’s impossible.”

  “So you’re going to talk to me about trust?”

  “What the hell, Lucy?” CJ removed her sunglasses and looked at me with a bemused expression. Her eyes were the color of the Caribbean Sea.

  Anger seized me. I was brimming with a fury so intense I was shaking. I didn’t care anymore. The words erupted out of my mouth. The wrath of eight years.

  “You slept with someone!” I yelled. “I saw you!”

  My eyes had flooded again—they seemed to be involuntary at this point—and liquid ran down my cheeks in torrents.

  CJ pulled the Lexus over to the shoulder of the highway. Something flashed across her face, and she looked broken. It was just past eight, and more cars were populating the interstate, rushing by us like rockets.

  “What?” Her voice sounded hollow, unfamiliar.

  “My freshman year of high school. I saw you.” I was crying so hard I could barely speak, my sentences choppy blocks of words. “Soccer practice was canceled and Mrs. Montgomery dropped me off and I went upstairs and I saw you with—with—you w
ere with Gabe Petersen.”

  CJ’s face turned white as a sheet. I sank my head between my knees and wailed silently, hot tears glazing my face. Nothing would ever be the same. I’d said it. She knew. It was over.

  An eternity passed.

  “Oh God, Lucy,” CJ said finally, her voice cracking, an unfamiliar pitch. “Oh God. Oh God. I had no idea.”

  I looked up; her face was covered in tears.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she gasped. “That was so many years ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Jesus Christ . . . my God . . . Georgia . . . does Georgia know?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for you. God, how did I not know? I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” CJ choked out her words, and I knew I was breaking things inside her, the same way things had broken inside me. “Oh, Lucy. It’s all my fault.” The rims of her eyes were pink and wet, and up close, she looked older than I remembered.

  “What made it even worse,” I continued. “Was that I had this huge crush on Gabe. I know you didn’t know that, but I kind of thought I loved him, that summer he gave me tennis lessons. He kissed me once. We started to fool around—it was just one time. I mean I was only fourteen and it was totally stupid, in retrospect, how much I liked him. But that made it even more horrible, when I saw you. Because of Dad but also because it was Gabe.”

  “Oh, Lucy . . . oh no. Of course I didn’t know any of that.” Tears spilled down her face as she explained how her affair with Gabe had lasted one month, how he’d shown up to her Pilates class one day after the summer he gave me lessons, how they’d connected, how it was the worst, dumbest thing she’d ever done.

  “I told your father about it—he didn’t find out on his own or anything. That’s when he went to stay with Uncle Pete in Cambridge. Remember those two months he spent in Boston, your freshman year?”

  I racked my brain for memories of ninth grade. The Unforgivable Thing clouded most of that year, but I did recall my father being gone for work a lot at some point. There’d been a big trial in Boston.

  “That trial in Boston? That wasn’t real?”

  CJ shook her head solemnly. “He worked remotely for a couple months. He was devastated—we both were. He just needed time and space from me—from everything—to work on forgiving me. He came home most weekends to see you guys. We should’ve told you. Oh God, I was such a wreck, too. I was so humiliated and confused.” CJ wiped her cheeks. “I was going through my own stuff, stuff from Marilyn and my parents that I’d never worked through. It doesn’t excuse what I did, not for a second, but I made a terrible mistake. Your dad and I went to therapy. A lot of it. And he found it in his heart to forgive me. We’ve moved past it—we so have—but oh, I hate thinking about it.”

  “I didn’t know that Dad knew.” My memory wound, my perspective splintering. “I assumed he didn’t know. I thought it was a secret you were keeping from all of us.”

  “That’s why you never brought it up with me?”

  “I guess, mainly. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want you guys to get divorced or something because of me.”

  “Oh, Sass . . . oh, love. I’m so sorry. We should’ve told you everything. It’s just . . . you and Georgia were in the thick of it in high school.”

  “So you lied.”

  “I know it was wrong, but yes. I don’t know . . . somehow it seemed like the right solution at the time. We knew we could fix our marriage and we didn’t want to confuse you.”

  “So what about the Petersens? Do Mr. and Mrs. Petersen know? Did you stop being friends with them? Does Dad hate Gabe?” I had too many questions; they toppled out.

  “Yes, the Petersens know. It hasn’t been easy between us, running in similar circles at Cove Club and whatnot. And then Macy died. It’s all so horrible. I want you to know, Lucy, that I love your father very much. I never stopped loving him.”

  I watched CJ’s face, the tears clinging to her thick eyelashes. The way her bottom lip trembled. I didn’t hate her, I thought. No matter what happened I didn’t hate her. People messed up. People were allowed to mess up. CJ wasn’t a bad person.

  I closed my eyes. Behind the lids I saw dozens of beloved objects sinking into a dark, deep river, and the guilt that had been absent for over a year was suddenly a force against my lungs, a weight so crushing I knew I had to speak.

  “I did something horrible, too.” I let the confession and the tears tumble out of me at once, and I let CJ catch me in her arms across the center console as I told her what I’d done with Marilyn’s jewelry. I felt her small, strong body sobbing lightly against mine. I inhaled the familiar scent of her face cream.

  “It’s okay, Lucy,” she whispered. “Jesus. Fuck. It’s okay.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I said, pressing my cheek against the softness of her cashmere. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She whispered it over and over again. She held my head in her hands, shrouding me with invincible love, the love that had never stopped for either of us. “I forgive you.”

  “I want to forgive you.” I picked my head up. “I know I can.”

  “I know you can, too. I’ll help you. It’s beyond complicated, I know, but Dad and I will explain everything to you and Georgia.”

  I nodded.

  “Does anyone know about . . . me?” CJ asked. “About the affair? Any of your friends?”

  “No one.” I couldn’t bring myself to say his name. I swore to myself it was the last lie I would ever tell her.

  I brushed my hair away from my face. Dried tears stuck to my cheeks, but I wasn’t crying anymore. My gut churned; I was suddenly hungrier than I’d felt in days.

  “CJ, can we get some coffee? And some breakfast? I’m starving.”

  “I’m hungry, too.” She wiped her eyes and smiled. She pulled the Lexus back onto I-278.

  “Hey, CJ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we go home and pick up Georgia and Dad? Can they come up to Chatham with us? I think it would be nice if we all went. We could spread the rest of Hickory’s ashes. She loved the Cape.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I like that idea.” CJ sniffled and pulled her sunglasses back over her eyes.

  We turned around at the next exit and headed south, toward home. It was still early in the morning and I couldn’t wait for a hot cup of coffee with milk and sugar. I couldn’t wait to be up on the Cape and play gin rummy with Georgia and smell the ocean from the deck. Maybe I would wake up the next day and feel better, like CJ said I would.

  Sunlight flooded the car as we headed home. My mother held on to my hand and I hoped she would never let go. I watched the gold-and-red trees fly by and I saw a little girl lugging a bright pumpkin up her front stoop. Fall had descended while I wasn’t looking. CJ lowered the windows and the air smelled like wood smoke. My heart felt empty and full at the same time.

  EPILOGUE

  LUCY

  AUGUST 2017

  “What the fuck? Jackie. What the fuck?”

  Jackie pulls me into the black town car waiting to take us back to the Donovans’ for the reception.

  “You look pale,” she says, which doesn’t surprise me because I’ve felt the blood draining from my face for the past thirty minutes, all throughout the ceremony.

  “You ladies want to leave now, or wait for the rest of the wedding pahty?” The driver speaks in a thick New Jersey accent.

  “Now,” Jackie says. “We need to leave now.”

  “Jack, aren’t we supposed to wait for the rest of the bridesmaids?”

  But the driver is already pulling out of the church. Jackie digs around in her clutch, pulls out bronzer and starts applying it to my face. The car hits a speed bump and the bronzer brush jerks up my cheek.

  “Jackie!”

  “Sorry!”

  “Ugh. He’s married. This is great. This is just great.”

  “He’s e
ngaged.”

  “You ladies okay?” The driver glances back at us in the rearview.

  “She’ll be fine,” Jackie says. “She just needs about six shots of vodka injected into her bloodstream.”

  “Weddings, I tell yah.”

  “Do you think Bree knew?”

  “Not a chance. She would have told you.” Jackie is wiping the excess bronzer off my face with a Kleenex. “There. You look way less pale.”

  “Here we ah!” The driver pulls to a stop in front of the Donovans’ mansion.

  “We’re here already?”

  “Want me to drive around the block a coupla times, miss?”

  “That won’t be necessary, but thank you,” Jackie says. “Lucy, get out of the car.”

  Everything is happening too quickly. Jackie leads me through the Donovans’ massive foyer to the terrace and the massive white reception tent. It’s all so perfect I want to mess something up. There’s a raw bar, a bubbly bar, two regular bars, a cheese station, a caviar station, a giant cake pop tree, an elaborate swan ice sculpture, and a chocolate fountain that looks like something out of Willy Wonka’s factory. The centerpieces are elaborate lilac sculptures and the two dozen round tables frame a huge dance floor facing a twelve-piece band. Little signs are displayed throughout the tent that read:

  Help us capture images throughout the

  night & share them using our hashtag:

  #BreecomingaDonovan.

  The place cards/table assignments are personalized engraved crystal champagne flutes:

  Lucy Albright

  Bree & Evan

  8.26.17

  Table 8

  The band has begun to play light, toe-tapping jazz, and the dusky sun fills the tent with a golden wash.

  “This is insane,” Jackie says as we beeline for the bar. “The last wedding I went to was my cousin’s and it was, like, hamburgers and hot dogs in a community-center rec room.” She shoves a whole cake pop into her mouth. “What? I’m starving.”