Lies She Told

by Cate Holahan

  I place the salmon on a waiting plate and peel back the foil. Chris pauses her “George the Donkey” tale long enough to compliment me on dinner before picking right back up where she left off. “I tell you, he was lucky that he told me in Manhattan and not out here, where I could have grabbed my Dad’s gun from the cabinet. I really might have shot him. I don’t even think anyone would have faulted me for it.” She chuckles. “Biggest regret of my marriage, that the frame I threw missed his face.”

  I murmur something affirmative as I dish out a salmon portion onto Chris’s paper plate. We should eat fast. The night air is chillier than I’d anticipated, and the citronella candles flickering on the table are providing more light than heat. If David were here, we could stay out. He would build a fire in the pit at the end of the pool. Not a flower fire, though. We learned later that the colors came from metal salts soaked into the ocean-bleached wood. Burning them gives off carcinogens.

  Chris grabs a fork in one hand and then swaps it for the wine glass. “Cheers.”

  I drop the knife for something to clink. The wine splashes up to the rim of my glass as I tap it against Chris’s goblet. She takes a long sip and shakes her head. “I’m going on and on and I haven’t even asked about you. How are the fertility treatments?”

  “I started that new one two months ago.” I dish the fish onto my plate. “I’ve seen a reduction in some of the uterine scarring.”

  “It’s a pill?”

  “It’s an implant.” I place my elbow on the table and angle my arm toward her, showing the raised lines on the inside of my bicep. Chris’s fair eyebrows retreat to her scalp. As much as she wants me to get pregnant, I know she hates my taking hormones. On more than one occasion, she’s cautioned about unforeseen side effects. Though she hasn’t suggested it, I think Chris would rather I hire a doula to chant incantations while dripping honey over my belly than pump my system full of synthetic gland secretions. The former might not work, but at least I wouldn’t suffer morning sickness for months and then fail.

  Chris’s nose wrinkles with disgust. “I’ve never seen that before.”

  “The treatment is still experimental.”

  She snarls. “Does it hurt?”

  “I can feel it under there, but it’s not a big deal.” I take a forkful of fish. Smokey lemon flavors coat my tongue. I’m not bad on the grill. David would be impressed. When he finally returns my calls, I can brag about my courage at the academy and my cooking skills.

  “What are the side effects?”

  I swallow and pick up my wine. “Bloating. Moodiness. Nausea. Forgetfulness. Headaches.” I raise the glass in jest. “Hangover-type symptoms.”

  A frown pulls down one side of Chris’s mouth. I’ve had migraines since I can remember so I’m used to working through the blinding pain and hours of incessant throbbing. Chris is not as able to withstand even a slight headache. When she went on Zoloft during the height of her divorce, she complained endlessly of pounding in her temples. I don’t know how you bear these things, Lizzie. My brain is about to explode.

  I sip my wine and return my attention to the pale-pink fish on my plate. Wild salmon may be extinct in ten years. Sea lice, prevalent in fish farms, are killing the juveniles before they can properly breed. There’s no getting around procreation problems.

  “Forgetfulness.” The candlelight hides the lines in Chris’s forehead, but I can tell her brow is lowered. “You mean like blackouts? Waking up and not knowing where you are or how you got there?”

  I eye Christine’s wine glass, already near empty even though she refilled it minutes ago. Drinking like she is could make a person familiar with blackouts. “Nothing that bad.”

  “What have you forgotten recently?”

  “I don’t know. Stories I’ve told.” She stares at me like I’m withholding key details. “I told my gyno a joke the other day that, judging from her reaction, I’d probably made before.”

  “That’s it?”

  I shrug. “As far as I know.”

  She settles back into her chair and brushes her red hair behind her right ear. This is her nervous tic. She has tucked her copper locks behind her ears since I can remember. If she is really on about something, she’ll twist the hair.

  “What’s wrong? You okay?”

  “Yeah.” A visible shudder undermines her assurance. She reaches across the table and puts her hand over my own. “I worry about you, Liza.”

  The gesture is almost parental. Christine has always been protective of me, but I must be giving off some really helpless vibe for her to go into full-fledged mom mode. Is it that obvious that I’m a weepy wreck from the hormones? I force a smile, embarrassed that I’ve caused my friend such concern. As if she didn’t have enough on her mind juggling the dating scene and a new job while her daughter spends the summer with the woman who stole her husband.

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  Her gaze travels from my face to the pool. In the darkness, the water resembles a creased black sheet. The switch for the lights is by the grill. I never flip it, though. Makes the pool eerie.

  “You need to be very, very careful with drugs that stress out your body and your brain, Lizzie.” She faces me again, as though looking at the pool has given her new resolve to act as my lifeguard. “Anything messing with your memory and your moods could have a major impact on your health, particularly in your case.”

  I feel a rush of anxiety followed by pressure in my ears, a hyperawareness of the soreness in my jaw. These are the precursors to a stress headache. I sip my wine, trying to stave off the migraine. “What do you mean?”

  Chris twists her hair. I’d intended the question to sound casual, but it shot out as upset as I feel. It’s easy for Christine to say that a side effect is too much to bear—she has a twelve-year-old daughter. She can’t know what she’d actually put up with if a doctor pulled her into a “counseling room” and said that, in all likelihood, she’d never, ever be a mother.

  “I mean the mind is a carefully calibrated piece of equipment. You put something out of whack, and next thing you know, you’re irrationally stressed or unable to cope. You could really damage yourself, Lizzie. And it’s not like you don’t have a history with depression. With everything that happened in high school, don’t you think you’re tempting fate a bit? There’s got to be another treatment out there that doesn’t impact your brain. You don’t want—”

  I put down my glass. It hits the table more roughly than I’d intended, cutting Chris off with a crack and splattering wine onto the glass surface. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Okay?”

  “But—”

  “I want a baby. You can’t understand because you have Emma. And you can’t tell me she’s not worth a thousand Georges and you wouldn’t suffer anything to be with her, even him sneaking around with the sitter.” My voice is trembling as though I might burst into tears. I breathe and speak slower. “I’ll be fine.”

  Again, Chris sweeps her hair behind her ear. She looks at me like I’m a kid about to go off to college. There are things she’s warned me about, the look says, but sometimes you can’t learn until you suffer the consequences.

  I take a long gulp of wine. The act works like a placebo, easing the pressure in my head even though the alcohol can’t have hit yet. “I’m working on a new book.”

  Chris’s shoulders sag. “What about?”

  “An affair.”

  She snorts. “Well, I guess you have the right friend for research. Lucky you.”

  I consider Chris. Sunset hair, honey-colored eyes. Brassy personality. “She’s not you. She’s a mousey brunette who slowly becomes a murderer.”

  Chris gives me her classic not-amused smirk, perfected during her teenage years. She doesn’t believe me. I guess I wouldn’t either if I were her. I’ve fleshed out characters with her features before. Why wouldn’t I base an affair story off of her experience? She’s told me enough.

  “In what world would you be mousey?�
��

  She gulps down the rest of her drink and smacks her lips together. “Appearance is a detail.”

  Chapter 6

  I dress to kill. A skintight sheath, fished from the back of my closet, is glued to my figure, or rather to the full-coverage Spanx cinching my postpartum body into my prepregnancy shape. My hair is blown out, the way I used to wear it before my morning routine included sponge bathing an infant. I’ve applied makeup: lipstick and eyeliner. If I’m going to confront Jake about breaking his marriage vows, I need to resemble the woman to whom he said, “I do.”

  I push the stroller through the glass doors of a squat, square courthouse building and head for a hallway lined with ancient Otis elevators. When I press the call button, there is a metallic shriek behind the wall reminiscent of the sounds heard through subway grates. A bell rings. I wheel the stroller inside, barely fitting it between a pair of suited men and the elevator operator, an employee from a different era who eyes my nonwork attire as though I may be an undercover operative before asking what floor I need.

  The doors open to a marble hallway. I roll the stroller over the hard stone, past the windowless room in which Jake’s secretary, Martha, works, squeezed between an oak desk and file cabinets. I like the woman. She’s an aging spitfire who couldn’t care less what people think of her. Last time I came here, she’d dyed her chin-length bob a silvery blue befitting a unicorn’s mane. She’d quipped that the color was closer to her natural gray than any of the Clairol shades.

  Maria’s door is always open, probably because any normal person would suffer claustrophobia with it closed. As I pass, she ducks her head out like a cautious anchovy and waves me over.

  “Hey, Beth. How are you? Did you bring Victoria?” Maria’s hands open and close. “I want to see how big she’s grown.”

  I push the carriage over to her door and peel back the sunshade. “She’s sleeping.” I’m stating the obvious. On a normal day, I’d relish chatting with the woman. Not today, though. “Is Jake in?”

  Maria’s smile twists into a bothered expression, deepening the frown line on the side of her mouth. “You know, I think he might be . . .” She points to the phone on her desk. “Let me call him for you.”

  Something about her behavior sets off my new infidelity detector. Maybe it’s how she pretends not to know what he’s doing or how she retreats into the room with tiny footsteps, as if tiptoeing. Perhaps it’s how she reaches for the receiver without pausing to sit down.

  I rotate the stroller and head down the hallway. “No worries. I’ll just pop my head in.”

  “Beth.”

  The sound of my name doesn’t pause my march to Jake’s door. It has a window encased in the wood, his full name etched into the glass. Through it, I see him seated in his office chair. A uniformed officer sits on the lip of his desk, leaning toward him.

  I throw open the door with such force that it bangs against the outside wall. I feel nothing as I enter. Instead of communicating my feelings about the presence of my husband’s lover, my mind dispassionately imparts logistics. Officer Colleen is six feet away from me. Her gun is on her holster. The carriage is to my left.

  “Beth!” Jake bolts upright and rounds the desk. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  The officer turns toward me, unpainted lips in a pursed smile. Her face is tinged with color, as though she’s blushing.

  “Officer, this is my wife.” Jake stands between us, angled to the side, leaving open my route to shoving her onto the thin carpet and breaking the bumped bridge of her nose. She’s smaller than me but undoubtedly more athletic. Stronger. Still, I’ll have surprise. Her guard is down. She’s trying to seem friendly. She doesn’t know that I know.

  “Honey, this is Colleen.” The term of endearment confuses me. I glance at Jake. The same red hue that colored his girlfriend’s skin tone transfers to him, darkening his tight smile.

  The woman extends her hand. I blink at it in awe. She’s sleeping with my spouse and still has the gall to shake?

  I face Jake. “I need to talk to you.”

  His face scrunches with concern. “Is something wrong?”

  I stare at Colleen. Her hand falls from the air onto her hips, inches away from her holster. “I was heading out anyway.” She walks behind my husband, shoulder nearly to the wall. It’s as wide a berth as she can give me.

  “You’ll e-mail with that arrest report?” Jake shouts after her. She pauses, one foot already in the hall. Her expression is first puzzled and then furious. He is pretending that their meeting was professional, for my benefit. A man poised to dump his wife for his mistress wouldn’t play such games. She grunts something affirmative and strides out the open door. It slams with a bang that rivals my own moments before and the noise wakes Vicky. She starts crying, sounding that little baby alert, part yell, part meow.

  “Heavy door.” Jake scoops her from the bassinet, cupping her head to his chest and supporting her back with his open palm. His weight shifts from side to side. Immediately, she starts to settle down, safe now from the noise that startled her to consciousness.

  The reddish hue fades from my vision. My husband is a decent father. Doesn’t my baby deserve her dad?

  “We need to talk.” The urgency has left my tone.

  “Everything all right?”

  “I’m going to leave Vicky with my mom in Jersey for the night.”

  “Are you feeling like you can’t take care of her?”

  The anger returns like a reversed tide. This must be how he’s excusing the affair. My wife became depressed after the baby. I needed attention. I look at his handsome face and regret that the picture frame missed his nose. “We need to talk.”

  He stops swaying and lowers Vicky from his chest into a cradle position before placing her in the stroller. A proud smile sneaks on his face. The sight of it threatens to weaken me. Anger is a lifeline to courage. I grasp for it by picturing Colleen’s face.

  “I’ll get back by seven,” I say. “You’ll be home. We can talk then.”

  “Sure. Well . . .” He looks up at me, smile no longer genuine. “Uh, I have some work that I was thinking might keep me.”

  I bet. “This is important. You’re not on trial. I need you home at seven.”

  “You don’t want to give me a clue as to what this is about?”

  “Seven, Jake.” I say it in a seething whisper. “I need you home at seven.” I lean into the stroller and tuck a blanket around Vicky’s legs. As I do, Jake dips his head in and kisses the side of my face.

  “I love you two,” he whispers. “You know that?”

  My fight vanishes. The only choice now is to flee. I wrest my head away from his warm lips and grasp the stroller handle. “Seven. Okay? I’ll see you at seven.”

  LIZA

  I wake with blood in my mouth. At first, I think the metallic flavor is a phantom taste left from my nightmare. In my sleep, I’d been floating above a mortally wounded Colleen, an omniscient narrator ready to read my character her last rights. She’d writhed below me, hands cupping a hole in her gut. The liquid pooling around her had appeared black in the darkness, motor oil from a busted gasket.

  My hand reveals that the cut is not in my imagination. A wet mark shines on the finger that I dragged across my lower lip. There are dark splotches that must be dried blood. I peel the sheets from my sweat-drenched body and roll from the bed, making my way from memory into the pitch-black hallway and toward the bathroom. Once inside, I close the door behind me and flick on the buzzing overhead light. The woman in the vanity has crazy hair and a raised welt from where a front tooth pierced flesh. I must rub my eyes to recognize myself.

  I grab a washcloth from beside the sink, wet it, and press it to my mouth. Reality still feels ephemeral. Am I nursing a real wound or still asleep, facedown on a drool-drenched pillow?

  By the time my bottom lip stops oozing, I’m wide awake. I return to my room and remove my charging laptop from the nightstand. I may not be ready to kill Colleen, but
I can picture Beth’s next move: dropping the kid off with her mother. I cannot have her confront Jake again with a stage whisper.

  *

  I finish the chapter as day breaks through the shutters. The light casts an alternating pattern of sun and shadow on the knotted pine floor, like a still shot of the view outside a moving subway. My mind feels slow. I’d like nothing more than to pull the covers over my head and get a few more hours of shut-eye. Doing so, however, would negate my early morning progress. I’ll need a few all-nighters to make my deadline as it is.

  Still, my brain requires carbohydrates, and my body could use a shower. A musky odor, like the smell of a dog’s neck, fills the room. There’s only one place it could be coming from.

  I return to the bathroom and step into the shower. When I was a child, sliding glass doors above the tub had walled off the area, turning it into a mini-steam room. My mother swapped them for opaque plastic curtains before I turned ten, presumably so I could brush my teeth in the sole upstairs bathroom without watching her shave. Seeing your parents naked is only appropriate when you don’t have a sense of why “private parts” should be private.

  Water sputters from the shower head. Though I have the dial turned to the hottest setting, the temperature is lukewarm at best, a consequence of the forty-year-old plumbing system. It’s amazing that people pay as much as they do to rent this place.

  As I scrub my body, I think of my mother, of the way her energy still permeates the house during the day, buttressing the rafters no matter how rotted the wood may be. If only I’d inherited some of her strength. Her fight. She would have no problem making this month’s deadline while on fertility treatments. A woman who can work in an office all day and then do all the cleaning, cooking, and child-rearing at night while her husband goes out drinking and womanizing would not be so easily overwhelmed by synthetic hormones. She certainly wouldn’t be near tears all the time.