Relatively Honest

by Molly Ringle

  “I did want to be with you. But not if anyone knew. Why would I keep it secret, unless I was ashamed?”

  “Fuck. You’re ashamed of me?”

  “Daniel, we’re first cousins! Are you about to go shout it from the rooftops? How many people did you tell?”

  “Well, just Sinter, but...”

  “You told Sinter?” Now she was angry.

  “Hey, when you lied about the ‘open relationship’ – which I can’t believe I fell for, by the way – you don’t get to be all outraged about who told what.”

  Her sigh sounded shaky, like she had been crying. “See? We don’t even trust each other. Why should we run away together?”

  “Because I love you more than anyone, ever. I hadn’t loved anyone, before you.”

  “You will again. You’re broken in now.”

  “No, no, no. Stop this. Come and get me, all right? We’ll get away. You’ll see, when we’re together…”

  “It won’t do,” she whispered.

  “It will do! Please!”

  “I can’t see you. Not for a while. We can’t go on like we were. I’ve never seen my dad so…disillusioned with me.”

  “You’re breaking up with me? You’re honestly breaking up with me?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Running away together, hello?”

  “Like my mother did? Was that the right solution? Did that lead to happiness on everyone’s part?”

  I went quiet. She had something of a point there. Then again… “Wasn’t all bad,” I said. “Sounds like she went to America and found someone she loved, someone who really treated her right. And they had a kid together, and it was all okay. She just got in an accident, and it ended before it should have.”

  Julie said nothing for several seconds, then sniffled. In a strained voice she answered, “Well. She was innocent. We weren’t.”

  “Don’t do this to me, Jules. God, please don’t.”

  “I can’t see you. I’d do something stupid.”

  “Don’t…”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel. I love you. Please let us stay on good terms.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Heal. Take some time. Forgive your parents.”

  “No – listen…”

  “That’s all. I’m sorry. Goodbye.” She hung up.

  I stretched out my arm and watched the lit-up screen on the mobile go dark. I lowered the phone to my lap. Sitting where I was, on my bed, this time I didn’t pay attention to the tears when they spilled onto my cheeks, because there was no one to see and no one to care.

  “THANK GOD, you’re still in Oregon,” I said.

  “Yeah, unfortunately,” Sinter said. “What’s up?”

  “All fucking hell has broke loose. When are you leaving for London?”

  “Uh…in two days. Why?”

  “I want to come. Is the flight full?”

  “I…have no idea.” I heard him moving, clicking keys at his computer. “I’ll check the web page. Want to elaborate, in the meantime?”

  “Not particularly. We’ll need something to talk about on a ten-hour flight.”

  “Can I guess?” he said. “Julie found out?”

  “Hah. Julie already knew. But it’s over anyway.”

  “Uh…”

  “Yeah, like I said. Details later. How’s the flight look?”

  “There’s room, actually,” he said. “It’s not cheap, but there is room.”

  “I’m only paying one-way. Should save some funds.”

  “You’re not coming back?”

  “Shan’t say ‘never’, but let’s say I’ve got no plans to.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Tell me the airline and flight number. I’ll buy the ticket.”

  I GOT through the next day by walking past my parents on the way to the kitchen and bathroom as if they weren’t there. They tried to talk to me, but I wouldn’t answer. I didn’t hear from Julie either, nor did I try to contact her, not until the morning I left. Then all she got was a short email, and directly after sending that I switched off my computer and packed it up.

  I emerged from my room with two heavy pieces of luggage and a sheaf of pages I had printed out from the web. My mother stepped into my path and asked where I thought I was going. I handed her the pages and kept walking.

  “What?” she shrieked, after a few seconds of looking at them. “What can you mean? Daniel, you’re not –”

  But I was down the stairs by then, and out the front door. A taxi awaited me at the curb. I got in, and the driver set off for the Bend/Redmond airport. I did not look back.

  On the top of the pages, I had put a printout of my flight confirmation: Bend/Redmond to Portland, Portland to Chicago, Chicago to London, complete with my name as “passenger” and today’s date under “departure.” Under that, a blank page on which I had scrawled a brief FAQ:

  When am I coming back?: Don’t know

  Who’s going with me?: Sinter

  Is Julie coming?: No

  Will I be checking email?: Occasionally

  Will we speak again?: Someday. Read the attached in the meantime.

  The attached was a collection of articles and information from the cousin-couples web pages, the same statistics that had convinced me I wasn’t totally mad to love Julie. She may not have wanted to see me anymore – at least not as her lover – but I felt it important that Mum and Dad see why I had acted as I did, all the same.

  I left my mobile behind, as it wouldn’t work in the UK, but from a pay phone in the Bend/Redmond airport I dialed the voice-mail number and checked my messages. Nothing. Did Julie not know yet that I was leaving, or was she trying to “make it easier on us both” by remaining silent, or some such shite?

  My flight began boarding. I filed on with the others, stashed my carry-on, and fastened my seatbelt. It felt like a dismal dream, sitting alone, rising off the ground, watching the beautiful Cascades peel away from my window. I looked at the houses and their tiny roofs down there in Bend, and knew Julie was beneath one of them, but I didn’t know which. I had never been to her house. I had mattered as little as that.

  Thought you should know I’m going back to London,

  I had written to her in this morning’s email.

  I got onto the same flight as Sinter. It leaves this afternoon. You won’t have to worry about running into me around Oregon this summer. Answer if you want a postcard or anything.

  Was that last line too hostile? It was twice as bitter as I ever acted toward my ex-girlfriends, but only a fraction of how bitter I really felt. I had never been dumped before, not since being handed a five-pound note and having a hotel door shut on me. And at least those girls hadn’t lied.

  In Portland I shouldered my carry-on and trudged to the gate where our Chicago flight would depart. A shock of black hair caught my eye: Sinter sat reading in a corner, wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, and his black leather jacket. His Doc-Martens-clad feet sprawled on either side of his luggage. Since Cyrano he had rarely bothered with the eyeliner and spiked-up hair, but now he had done both again – probably from being around his parents and wishing to irritate them. Today I understood that impulse completely.

  “Ahoy.” I approached him.

  He looked up. “Hey.”

  I fell into the chair beside his. “Finally, someone who’s not completely insane.”

  “That’s not one I often get.” He closed his book. “So, I’m kind of dying of curiosity. What happened?”

  My explanation, and his questions, took up so much time that we were boarding the plane before finishing the discussion. I fastened my seatbelt, and panicked a little as the engine started to squeal in warm-up. “This is really it,” I said. “No going back, is there?”

  “Well, they do sell return tickets.”

  “But if I don’t stop now I’ll be in Chicago in a few hours, and then London this time tomorrow. Is this completely stupid of me?”

  “You can come back later. Som
e time apart will be good for you both. Besides, I want you to show me around London.”

  “But it’s cowardly. Isn’t it? Running off like this? Is this what Cyrano would have done?”

  “Cyrano would probably do something involving a sharp sword, so forget that. Look, I can tell you this: I’ve spent enough of my life staying and suffering. I don’t see why running away and suffering is any less noble.”

  I fell silent as the plane taxied forward. We were soon airborne, and it was only minutes before the lovely mountains gave way to golden-brown desert below. Goodbye, Oregon.

  “In case you think I don’t see the irony,” I said, “I do.”

  “Irony?”

  “The player getting played. Maybe irony isn’t the right word. Maybe more like ‘karma.’”

  “Ah. Yes. Open relationship. Don’t ask, don’t tell. That was a good one.”

  “She’s devious. She’s heartless. She’s evil.”

  “You don’t believe a word of that.”

  I closed my eyes. “Leave a man to his delusions, would you?”

  Chapter 22: You Could Have Anyone

  SINTER LOVED London. He became a hyperactive puppy the minute the flight attendant said, “We are beginning our descent into Heathrow Airport,” and stayed that way for days. The Heathrow Express train, which carried us past industrial rail yards and ugly high-rise flats, delighted him. Advertisements for British products made him grin and nudge me. The Tube practically had him on his knees kissing the grimy concrete. And of course he went totally off his head for Westminster Abbey, as it was not only true Gothic architecture but came with the added benefit of having thousands of corpses buried under the paving stones.

  “How could you stand Eugene a single day?” he asked me, as we threaded through the crowds of shoppers in Soho. “When you came from this! This!”

  “Suppose I did miss the old city. Now that I’m back, feels as if I never left.”

  Which wasn’t strictly true. I did lead Sinter around the crooked streets, and hopped from one Tube line to another, and understood slang that perplexed him, all without having to think twice. I grew up here; it was instinct. And it was good to be back in my own element. However, to say that I felt as if I had never left, as if Oregon had never happened – that was another white lie in my colorful life.

  A dull pain with every heartbeat, a desolation when I saw couples kissing, a loneliness in the middle of the night when I awoke in our dark hotel room and estimated the hour in Oregon and imagined what Julie was doing: those all reminded me that my ten months in America had been quite real. I was home, but I was changed.

  To my terse email she had answered even more tersely:

  Can’t blame you for taking some time off to visit home. Have a safe trip. Hope we see each other again. Take care.

  “Hope we see each other again,” period. Not “hope we see each other soon,” or “hope we see each other next term,” no, just again, just someday. That didn’t give a bloke much to live on.

  My parents had left me two emails by the time our plane arrived in London. Mum wrote:

  Are you planning to come back for university in the autumn?

  I hope you intend to tell us, at least. And if you’re really determined to spend the entire summer in England, then at least ring Nanny in Chichester as I’m sure you could stay with her.

  In the second one, Dad wrote:

  Daniel, it was a very drastic, not to mention expensive, move to go dashing off like that, but I understand why you did it. I apologize for the part we played in what happened to you. I agree we should have mentioned the family connections earlier. And though we may disapprove of what you’ve done, we didn’t wish to drive you off like this. Do feel you can come back at any time.

  If only he hadn’t written “we may disapprove of what you’ve done,” I might have considered myself forgiven. I answered that I didn’t know when I was coming back, and that we planned to stay in London a while, and find jobs and a flat.

  Sinter insisted on Camden. In a livelier mood I might have objected that it was too noisy and expensive, but now I didn’t care. We found a furnished flat that was small but not too frightening. He used his work permit to get a pub job a few streets away, and I used some old connections to obtain a job with a historic preservation group. I spent six hours a day in the dusty storage room of a church in Victoria, checking inventories of statuary and bits of banisters as they came in and went out, and helping to clean and restore them in between. On really exciting days I got to accompany the other workers – two foreign students and a pair of old ladies – to churches and ancient houses in other parts of London, and dust the statues there. It didn’t escape my notice that this seemed the kind of job Julie would have.

  Sinter’s enthusiasm diminished once he had been working for a couple of weeks. “All I see is drunken idiots,” he complained. “And most of them are American or Australian.”

  “Yes, well. Welcome to the real London.”

  It was a sunny and mild July day, and we were buying groceries. “Heard from Julie?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He put a packet of crumpets in the shopping basket. “Written to her?”

  “No.”

  He picked up a type of chocolate bar that evidently they didn’t have in America. “Are these any good?”

  “No.” I took it from him and replaced it with a better sort.

  That Friday night we went to a pub. Not his pub; he was adamant about that. He had me choose one, so I took him across the city to a more posh place near my old house. Sinter ordered ale. I had one, then switched to Coke.

  “You’re still depressed,” he scolded, after two pints.

  “Yeah.”

  “She lied to you. She isn’t worth it.”

  “I lied too.”

  “But the open relationship thing – come on!”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then she ditched you. You were willing to run away with her and everything, and she ditched you. For the ‘family.’ What the hell?”

  “Funny choice of words, eh? Family.”

  He shook his head. “That doesn’t even matter, you know. You being cousins. Really, I bet nobody would care after, like, the first shock.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you’re still depressed,” Sinter said.

  “Waiting for it to wear off. Any day now.”

  Sinter got halfway through a third pint, then pushed it aside and said he was done. On the Tube to Camden, we sat back and closed our eyes as the stations flashed by and the track clattered beneath us. Sometimes, on a turn, he swayed against me. He smelt of leather and pub smoke and the hotel shampoo we had nicked. We arrived at our stop, and I nudged him awake.

  We stepped off the train and walked to our flat. I unlocked our door. “You’re the only one who knows all that bollocks about me,” I said, “and likes me anyway.” We felt our way into the tiny front room. I could just make out the shapes of the furniture in the city-light from the window. “Thank you for that,” I added.

  Sinter slung his arm around me. “I love you for your weaknesses.”

  I smirked.

  He dropped his keys on the table, hooked his other arm around me, and kissed me full on the mouth, just like he had kissed Julie on stage all those times.

  Shock and amusement flooded through me. I broke into laughter even before he stepped away. “Bloody lunatic.” I punched his arm.

  He laughed too. “I must be drunk.”

  “Off your head. Get the light, would you?” We were still standing in the shadows, and he was nearer to the switch.

  “Okay.” But instead he stepped toward me, took my face in his hands, and kissed me again.

  This time I didn’t laugh. This time, neither did he. I stood there stunned. I think I even kissed him back, a little. Part of me was thinking, Oh God, oh fucking God, why didn’t I see this coming? Why didn’t I suspect? All those months, living with me – watching me undress, was he? Thinking a
bout me? Oh, fuck, what do I do now?

  Another part, the part letting me stand still, was thinking, Well, why not? I’ve tried everything else. I’ve been burned enough by girls. Maybe this is just the thing. How can I say, if I’ve never given it a go?

  However, you generally know when a kiss is going right. You generally realize, Why, I’ve liked you all along! if you didn’t know it already. Instead I only felt sad and helpless. I turned my face away.

  He released me. “I know you could get anyone,” he said. “That includes me.”

  I walked across our still-dark front room and sat on the arm of the sofa. “I…appreciate the thought. But I still love her. I know it’s pathetic. But I’d turn down Keira Knightley these days, it’s that bad.”

  He let out a sigh. I heard the jingle of keys as he dragged them around on the table. “I shouldn’t have even pulled shit like this. Forget I did it, okay?”

  “It’s all right. I’m a modern bloke, and all that.”

  “And you’re totally, obviously straight.”

  “Yes, well…the thing is, I rather thought you were too.”

  “I don’t know what I am. Other than a fucking moron.”

  “Sinter, don’t. No harm in trying. I like you. I’m just…a mental case.”

  He walked to the five-foot-square kitchen, and opened the fridge. The light shone on his downcast profile. He took out a bottle of water, swigged from it, and put it back. The darkness fell again. “I probably won’t remember this tomorrow,” he said. “Don’t remind me. Okay?”

  I kicked my heel against the sofa a few times. “Okay.”

  “Super. Goodnight.” He trudged past me to his room, and closed the door.

  I toppled onto the sofa and covered my face with both arms. I was being truthful with everyone at last. I wasn’t lying anymore. But now everyone I knew was disappointed in me, which felt far worse.

  WHILE I sat at the kitchen table the next morning, eating toast and reading Internet news on my laptop, Sinter wandered in, cringing.

  “I hardly even remember getting back,” he said. “Did you carry me or what?”