Lies She Told

by Cate Holahan

  I sit on David’s side of the stripped bed, too weak to rise. Why would David kill Nick, though? He wouldn’t have murdered the man that he loved simply to prevent me from finding out about their affair. He was willing to leave me. I would have learned of his relationship with Nick eventually.

  The realization sneaks up on me, a robber with a knife to my throat. All of a sudden I can’t move. Can’t swallow. Can’t breathe.

  Nick was stealing my husband. I had the motive.

  Oddities for which I’ve invented excuses flash in my mind. I see David’s confusion after the police couldn’t find my gun followed by Sergeant Perez’s satisfaction as he insisted that I’d become a good shot. David really hadn’t appeared to know the location of my Ruger, and he isn’t an actor. Perez had been so sure that he’d seen me at the academy, and he’s trained to differentiate between similar people. What if I had taken my gun? What if I did go to the range? What if I suspected the affair and took protection into Nick’s rough neighborhood to stake out his apartment and catch David in the act?

  But why wouldn’t I remember?

  I writhe on the mattress as the answer rips through my brain. The hormones! Dr. Frankel warned me that they could cause memory loss. And they’re still in the experimental stage. What other side effects might they have that she doesn’t even know about?

  I bring my forearm to my face. My throbbing vision makes the white lines sink deeper into my epidermis. I’d been willing to sacrifice anything—even my sanity—for a baby. But I’d never imagined the drugs could make me a murderer.

  *

  I call the fertility clinic from the cab. The secretary tries to push me off until my next appointment. “I need them out now,” I yell. “You don’t understand. I have to be seen now. I’ve got to remember. I have to know.”

  Panic prevents me from controlling my volume in the vehicle’s small interior. The driver checks the rearview mirror to monitor me, as though he fears I could start ripping apart the plastic seats or throw open the door and run before paying the fare. I hear the child locks click.

  “Okay, Ms. Cole. Please calm down. We will fit you in right away.”

  A nurse is waiting for me at the clinic door. She rushes me through reception into a private room as though my hysteria is contagious, capable of infecting the developing fetuses swelling in all the successful trial subjects waiting for Dr. Frankel’s glowing smile. The needles burn beneath the skin. I claw at my bicep, turning those faint raised lines into raw red tracks. The nurse keeps her distance as she tells me to sit on the examination chair and wait for the doctor. She sounds like a dog trainer.

  I’m not to disrobe. I keep on the denim shirt dress that I threw on before racing out of my apartment. I take off my purse and place it beside me.

  Clothed, I can appreciate the room in a way that I never could while shivering in a paper gown atop wax paper, bracing for a probe. I smell urine masked with lemon-scented disinfectant. The sonogram cart appears ancient. Its monitor is scuffed black around the edges. The urine collection cups have a gray film of dust outside. A hair clip lies on the counter, dark strands clinging to a knot inside it. Did the staff not have time to get the room ready for me, or has it always been this way? Did my hope for the treatment make me view this place as a state-of-the-art medical center when it was really a dirty lab with human rats?

  Dr. Frankel’s smile is even more strained than usual when she enters. My chart is already under her arm, and a laptop is balanced on her left palm. Instead of inquiring how I am doing, she asks, “What seems to be the problem?”

  “It’s the forgetting,” I say, still scratching at the injection site like a cocaine addict. “I am doing things that I can’t remember. I need these needles out. I need you to take them out today.”

  She rolls her stool from beneath a desk and sits down, placing the laptop on her thighs. “What, specifically, have you forgotten?”

  Frustrated tears fill my eyes. How can I explain this? Saying that I killed my husband’s gay lover and forgot doing it sounds insane. She might have me committed rather than remove the implants.

  She stares at me from above her monitor. Waiting.

  “The other day, a friend said he saw me at a gun range. I can’t remember going in the past year.”

  Computer keys clatter. “Maybe he was mistaken? Did he talk to you at the range?”

  My throat tightens. I shake my head.

  “Did you check if you had signed in there, or did anyone else see you there?”

  I have to come up with something that has proof. My gun is not in the apartment. That’s a demonstrable fact. “I can’t find my handgun either. I’m always very careful with it. I keep it in a lockbox on a high shelf in my closet. But it’s not there.”

  “So you think that you misplaced it?” Dr. Frankel’s mouth rests in the same sympathetic pose as always, but I detect a spark of amusement in her eyes. She thinks I am freaking out over a general distractedness—the kind that anyone might experience when also battling headaches and low-grade nausea, working on a tight deadline, and juggling fertility clinic visits.

  “You don’t understand. I have no idea where it is. None at all.”

  “Hormones do impact memory, and I can understand it being disconcerting. When I was pregnant, I’d have my keys in my hand one minute and wouldn’t remember for the life of me where I put them the next. I thought I was going nuts. My husband thought I was bonkers.”

  She smiles. I want to slap that practiced empathy off her face. I want to shake her until she understands that I am not talking about keys or leaving out a carton of milk or misremembering where I left the car in the mall parking lot.

  “I’m not talking about little things.” My voice rises in pitch and trembles, an opera singer sustaining a shrill high note. “I’d never leave a gun lying around.”

  “Maybe you hid it in a new spot that you thought was safer, and then it slipped your mind.”

  I want to scream. “It’s not only the gun. I’ve learned things—important facts about people that I care about—that I can’t remember knowing at all. I may have done things—life-changing things—that I can’t remember doing. I’m not forgetting details; I’m forgetting days.”

  Dr. Frankel’s curls shake as her head turns from side to side. She shuts her laptop with a decisive clap. “Hormones impact short-term memory, Liza. Small things. Forgetting major events or a day’s worth of activities are not side effects that could be caused by any hormonal imbalance from this medication. What you’re talking about would be evidence of a psychotic break or brain trauma from an accident.” Her eyes narrow. “Or excessive alcohol consumption.”

  Dr. Frankel’s arched eyebrows raise. “Have you been drinking on this medication?”

  “Not really.”

  She looks disbelieving. In her mind, my rushing here in a frantic state is probably a classic symptom of substance abuse. I run a mental tally of the alcoholic beverages that I’ve consumed in the past week: a few glasses of wine with Christine, a half bottle on the plane with Trevor, a cocktail the Sunday evening of the conference. Health questionnaires put five or more drinks per week as the highest answer on the multiple choice asking how often you imbibe. Circling it is a sign of a problem.

  “I had a writers’ conference recently that involved a bit more wine than is usual for me. But the forgetting was happening before.”

  My doctor’s brow furrows. “You never mentioned memory loss as a problem before.”

  “I didn’t realize that I was losing time until recently.” The words fight their way from my closing throat. “But some of the things that I’ve forgotten happened more than a month ago. I’m only now realizing that I might have done them, that I could have done them.”

  Tears spill from my lower lid. “Please.” My voice breaks. “I need the hormones out.”

  Dr. Frankel frowns at me for the first time ever—that I can remember. She stands and walks over to me. “Lay back.”

  I do
as I’m told. A small penlight shines in her palm. She instructs me to open my eyes wide. Her face hovers above mine as she flashes the beam in my pupils. “You’re retinas are responsive,” she says, waving her fingers for me to sit back up.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing seems wrong with your brain.” She resumes her seat on the rolling stool. “I can schedule a CAT scan if you’d feel better about it.”

  “Please just remove the needles. The hormones have to be causing this.” Tears overwhelm my words. “I just . . . I need to know what I’ve done. I can’t function. I—”

  “Liza.” Dr. Frankel says my name like a slap. “You need this study to help you get pregnant, and it needs your results. What we learn from this drug—how it shrinks uterine scar tissue and aids implantation—promises not only to help you carry a healthy baby to term but also to help other women suffering like you to conceive in the future. Dropping out now would compromise the study results. It might keep the drug from getting to market.”

  Shame increases my tears. “I’m sorry. But you don’t understand what . . . I may have . . .” My confession burns in my throat. I swallow it.

  Her expression softens. She squeezes my hand. “I promise you, Liza. This medication is not making you forget major actions. If you did something momentous, you’d remember it. What it may be doing is causing you to jump to some irrational conclusions, particularly if you’ve been drinking on it and under a lot of stress.”

  I want to believe her. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. These drugs could never cause the kind of memory lapses that you’re describing. I know we call them experimental, but they’re really a combination of the same hormones in many other fertility drugs. The experimental part is more the delivery system than anything else.” She fixes me with her round brown eyes. I see my desperate reflection in her pupils. “I know how much you want to have a baby, but I would never put you or any of my other patients on drugs that could cause psychological damage, even to bring a new life into the world. At the end of the day, you’re my patient. I’m here to take care of you.”

  My clenched muscles start to relax. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding based on my hormone-hyped emotional state and a single shred of forgotten behavior. Maybe, knowing that I would be in the Hamptons alone, I took along my gun. Then, after drinking myself sick with Christine, I forgot doing it. Maybe, as David said, we are being investigated simply because he was Nick’s business partner and the police know conflicts can arise from such close relationships. Maybe David is only a touch bisexual and he was experimenting with Nick but not planning to leave me.

  Maybe you already know the truth, Beth says.

  The emotion in my doctor’s face seems sincere. She wants what is best for me, and what is best for me is to forget all about a Nick and have a baby. I nod and tell her that she’s right. I am acting nutty. Paranoid. I will stay on the drugs. I want a child. These implants are my best chance.

  “Okay.” She releases my hand. “So I’ll see you next week. We will stay on top of how the hormones are impacting you emotionally, and you’ll call me if you start getting overwhelmed or feel out of control or—”

  My purse buzzes. I offer an apologetic smile as I grab the phone inside. I don’t recognize the number on the screen, but I answer anyway. For all I know, it’s the police.

  “Elizabeth, I’ve been . . .” It’s David. He sounds as though he’s been bawling. My stomach twists into a knot. I know what’s coming. “I’ve been arrested and arraigned. I need you to bring bail.”

  Chapter 16

  The park is overcrowded. Gym towels and picnic blankets cover the grass, transforming the fenced lawn outside my building into a patchwork quilt held together with green stitching. Atop every fabric surface is a sunbather in some stage of undress. I spy a group of co-eds, no doubt escaping from Greenwich Village’s paved common spaces. They wear triangle bikini tops and flaunt their prebirth bellies in the direction of a nearby volleyball court. These are the kind of girls that men like my husband salivate over. The Jakes of the world stalk such women with their wolfish grins. They separate them from their female herds with strategic flattery. You’re the prettiest. You’re the smartest. You’re so much more desirable than your friends. They scatter promises of adoration and fidelity at their feet, breadcrumbs leading back to their lairs. Then, when the young women are lost, permanently disoriented from seeing themselves and their surroundings through a male gaze, the Jakes return to hunting.

  I wish to warn them not to be the lamb I was, a twentysomething transplant to the city starving for affection, thinking a husband and a baby would fill the spaces inside me. Do not court the hungry stares of the volleyball players across the way and instead toast your youth with your plastic cups of blush wine. Discover yourself before you find a man. Otherwise, when he leaves, you won’t know where to go.

  But I can’t give them any advice. I’ve killed one of their kind, and I still don’t know where I am going. I only know where I don’t want to end up.

  I push the stroller past a gaggle of moms hovering over a baby playground. Before, I might have joined them, introducing myself with a question about their respective children’s ages. But I am not one of them anymore. I can’t imagine making small talk about spit up and whether organic onesies are worth the price. I’m surprised that I ever managed it.

  Vicky is cooing at me. She’s happy from her marathon of “Pop! Goes the Weasel” and the fact that the stroller’s motion shakes the animals appended to the bassinet’s sun shade. I talk to her as I walk, supplying the advice that I wish I’d had in my twenties in hopes that she picks up on my speech, if not its content.

  Every now and again, I feel the prickle of a focused stare on my back. When I look over my shoulder, however, I see the same nondescript crowd of city dwellers: people of all colors dressed in too much black, navy, and gray for the season. I don’t really look too hard for the source of my unease. There’s no reason for the police to track me, and I’ve been careful enough that there shouldn’t ever be one. My guilt is creating goose bumps.

  I walk down the esplanade, scanning for dumpsters. Manhattan authorities eliminated most public trash cans after the Boston Marathon bombings showed they could be exploited by terrorists. Dumpsters were spared due to the ability of their reinforced walls to contain blasts.

  It’s not until I reach the Staten Island ferry terminal that I see one: a massive container with corroding blue paint and white bubble letters spray-painted on its sides. The receptacle begs to be emptied. Black garbage bags are piled so high inside that they force open the rubber lid.

  I stroll past the bin, glancing around to see whether there are cameras or particularly interested patrolmen. No blue uniforms stand out in the throngs of commuters. Again, I stroll to the container, this time parking my baby right beside it. I crouch to the basket beneath Vicky’s bassinet and grab the flip-flops along with an unused diaper, with which I hastily wrap the shoes. When they’re covered, sort of, I stand on my tiptoes and drop them atop a closed trash bag. There’s no need to push the thongs farther into the garbage. No one is looking for Colleen’s shoes. By the time they do, these will be in a landfill.

  With the last of the evidence gone, I feel a lightness that I haven’t since before learning of my husband’s affair. Nothing in my possession connects me to Colleen anymore. I’ve discarded everything, even Jake.

  I push the stroller away from the trash and breathe in my freedom. I’m single in Manhattan for the first time since turning twenty-four. And at least for the next four weeks until my maternity leave ends, I don’t have a job to worry about. What should Vicky and I do? How should we amuse ourselves?

  I look down into the bassinet. My daughter’s mouth moves back and forth, sucking on an imaginary nipple. Her eyes are closed. The sunshine and fresh air has worked its magic.

  New question. How should I amuse myself?

  Tyler’s handsome face comes to mind. What better way
to kill time?

  LIZA

  Bail bondsmen do not have offices on the Upper East Side. The types of establishments that grant loans to the wives of suspected killers know there’s little money to be made operating out of the ground floor of a ritzy condominium. They set up shop in commercial buildings across from jails and courthouses—the kind of locales that don’t frown upon neon lights in the window advertising “Get Out Fast.”

  The closest bondsman is south of Houston. A taxi driver ferries me thirty minutes through traffic from my fertility doctor’s office to a grimy street in the financial district lined with electronics repair shops. I spot the place a hundred yards before we pass it. Who could mistake a yellow awning with spray-painted black handcuffs? I ask the driver to let me out on the corner even though he could easily stop in front of the store.

  My legs wobble as I exit the cab and head to a neon sign boasting “Affordable Bail.” It’s an oxymoronic phrase if there ever was one. Securing David’s release will cost a million dollars. Seventy percent of the cost of our majority-bank-owned apartment. His entire post-tax salary for the past five years. More than the sum of my life’s earnings.

  When David had revealed the price, my head had hammered so hard that I’d feared a stroke. He’d explained that we only needed to post 10 percent of the coupon, as though that was supposed to make me feel better. I’d responded that a hundred thousand would liquidate our savings, effectively bankrupting us. Any more would have had the virtue of being impossible.

  David had not taken kindly to my preference that he await trial in jail. He’d assured me, voice filled with righteous indignation, that when the state ultimately drops the charges, he will sue for every penny of his bail, plus personal damages. He’d also threatened to have Cameron secure his release with a loan from the business, if I “couldn’t be bothered.” The idea of David’s secretary showered with his gratitude made me ill. After all, she wouldn’t be on the hook for the money if he skipped town.