Friends and Other Liars

by Kaela Coble

  She pretends she’s real into the talk show as she flops onto Charlene’s La-Z-Boy, even though she always teases me for watching this shit. “Yeah,” she says, casual as anything. “Hardy is actually pretty cool. We talked about our parents. His are even more fucked up than mine, if you can believe it.” She says it like she rehearsed it. “Hey, are there any smokes left?”

  Oh, and now she’s going to lie to me and act like nothing happened? I’ve been walking on horseshoes for two weeks while she just pretends everything is fine, and now she’s going to treat me like I’m stupid? “Really?” I say. “In all this time you spent ‘talking,’ did he tell you all about his girlfriend?”

  That gets her attention. She narrows her eyes at me and shakes her head. “He said he wasn’t seeing anyone. That he just broke up with—”

  “Brandy McCallister?” I say. Ruby nods. “Well, that’s funny, because Brandy McCallister called here about two hours ago. She said she was waiting for her boyfriend to get back with the weed. Wanted to make sure he was okay.”

  Ruby’s face gets even whiter than usual. She swallows. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her he got you drunk and fucked you, Ruby,” I say sarcastically. “What do you think? I lied! I told her he left hours ago, and I didn’t know where he went. She was probably worried out of her mind he was in a ditch somewhere. Too bad she was right.”

  “Ally, cut it out,” I hear from the doorway behind me. Oh, perfect. This is when Murphy decides to make an entrance, swooping in just as Ruby starts crying so I look like the bad guy and he gets to be the big hero.

  Ruby crosses the room to Murphy, and he hugs her. Without a word, he leads her into the spare room where he’s been sleeping while I’ve been up worrying. I’m about to sneak over to the door to see if I can hear them talking when Murphy comes back.

  “Ally, what the hell is wrong with you?” he whisper yells at me.

  “With me?” I whisper yell back. “What’s wrong with me? I’m the one who’s actually looking out for her, Murphy. What the hell did you do to help?”

  “I wasn’t even here!” he says.

  “Exactly. You’re supposed to be Ruby’s ‘best friend,’ and you didn’t think it was important to stay close and protect her when she’s obviously going through a rough time?”

  “Protect her from what? As far as I knew, our friends were supposed to be here shootin’ the shit in Danny’s basement, like always. Was I somehow supposed to know some predator would be here, just waiting to get Ruby drunk so he could—” He swallows. He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to think of Ruby acting so… Well, I don’t need to say it out loud. You know what I’m thinking.

  “Whatever, Murphy. All I’m saying is don’t yell at me for not being able to stop Ruby from leaving with him. I tried. But you know Ruby. She doesn’t listen to anyone. If you had been here, maybe you could have stopped her. God knows, you’re the only one she listens to.”

  Murphy just looks at me. We’re both pissed—at each other, at ourselves, at Hardy, but really at Ruby. And I think we both realize it, because we stop yelling. “I’m gonna go check on her,” he says. I follow him, thinking I could probably comfort her better than Let’s Have a Farting Contest Leblanc, but he closes the door on me before I can set foot in the room.

  As the door is shutting, I see Ruby sitting on the bed with her head in her hands, and something is strange. I realize after the door shuts what’s bugging me—the bed was made and the curtains were wide open on the window that faces the street. It looks like I’m not the only one who was waiting for her to come home.

  I rest my ear against the door. I mean, it’s only right to listen and make sure she’s okay. I guess I was kinda harsh, but that’s tough love. What was I supposed to do? Congratulate her on her first time being with a lowlife like Hardy? Pat her on the back for throwing out her virginity with the bathwater? She didn’t confirm it, but I know what happened, because I know Hardy. And I thought I knew Ruby, but I guess not. She’s supposed to be the smart one. Even if she didn’t already know what Hardy did at Dunphy’s field, she’s still lived in this town all her life. She’s pulled older versions of Hardy off her mother long enough that she can smell a bullshitter coming from a mile away.

  All I hear for a few minutes are muffled sobs, and every once in a while Murphy shushing her and saying it’s okay. Another relationship I will never understand.

  The sobbing seems to be slowing down now, a good sign. I hear a sniffle and then “Oh God, I didn’t know, Murph.”

  “I know,” I hear him say.

  “How could I be so stupid?”

  “You’re not stupid, Tuesday. You just made a mistake.”

  “Yeah, a really fucking stupid mistake.” Amen, sister, I think.

  “I already catch shit for Nancy being a slut. I can only imagine what’s going to happen when people find out I—”

  “Ruby, stop it. You are not a slut.”

  “I am! What else do you call losing it to someone else’s boyfriend in the back of a truck on the side of the road? I’m a slut and a terrible person. Oh my God, I think I’m going to throw up, I’m so disgusted with myself.”

  “You are not a terrible person. You’re one of the best people I know. If you’re going to puke, I’m guessing that has more to do with the vodka. Ally told me you were hitting it pretty hard.”

  I hear a small laugh, a sniffle, and then silence. Then Ruby says, so quietly I have to really press my ear against the door to hear, “School starts next week. Everyone’s going to be talking about it. Nice way to kick off junior year.”

  “No one’s going to find out. I don’t think Hardy will exactly advertise it and risk Brandy finding out.”

  “Murph, she knows. There’s no way it’s going to keep quiet.”

  “I’ll talk to her, and she won’t say anything.”

  Who the hell are they talking about? Brandy? How would Brandy know? Hardy certainly isn’t going to tell her. And if she does figure it out, how is Murphy going to stop her from spreading it all over school? Hell is not as furious as a woman…who’s furious, or whatever.

  “Yeah but she’s definitely going to tell Aaron. And Nicki. And Nicki will tell Emmett, and then all of a sudden the whole hockey team knows—”

  Bitch! She’s talking about me? After all I’ve done for her, here she is acting like I’m some enemy? I would never ever tell anyone this. I mean, Aaron was there. He already knows. And I would never talk to Nicki about it. I love her and all, but she’s Emmett’s girlfriend, not an original crew member. She’s in the circle, but not the inner circle.

  Am I the only one who remembers the night before we started ninth grade? Everything was changing so fast—my dad leaving, my brother already away at college, starting high school with kids from all over the county upsetting our place on the social ladder. I just wanted to pump the brakes before we crashed into all that. What did we say to each other?

  “I promise to be loyal to the crew above all else, to always be honest and true through good times and bad.” And it worked, I thought! If it weren’t for those promises we made, the promise to stay close, to trust each other, would we even still be friends? How are we supposed to take care of each other if we have secrets from each other?

  And now Ruby is talking like I’m some monster who just wants to ruin her reputation. Well, I’m washing my hands of this whole mess. If Ruby thinks staying out of each other’s business is what friendship is, then I will. And I will keep her out of mine. From now on, we’re just roommates. She can have all the time she wants to talk on the phone with Murphy. She’s his problem now.

  6

  RUBY

  NOW

  The smell of the linens tells me I’m home before I even open my eyes. They smell like the cedar chest at the end of the bed where they’re stored between uses. I slept on these pale-blue she
ets (alternating with their fraternal-twin set of pale green) for over fifteen years, ever since I graduated from a crib to a big-girl bed. Coral used to tease our mother—back when she still spoke to her, that is—about never updating or replacing any of the furniture or decor, but Nancy would always reply, “They’re perfectly good sheets! There’s no use spending the money on something we don’t need!” which is where Murphy’s impression of her comes from. Swap out the word sheets with dresser, couch, throw pillows, shoes, car, or anything with the potential but not necessity for updating, and you could pretty much script any conversation from my childhood that included a request for material goods.

  Nancy was raised by a poor, single mother in North Carolina, back when they were called unwed mothers (a.k.a. whores), and therefore balks at the idea of buying something just because you want it. They moved up here when Nancy was in high school because my grandmother wanted her to have a better education than she could in the south, thus providing her with the opportunity for a better life. But Nancy’s bipolar disorder made school a struggle, and holding down a job even more so.

  Her last job was as my father’s secretary at his office in Burlington when he was just starting out as an investment advisor. Instead of firing her, he married her. (He jokes he proposed to avoid having to pay severance.) After that, Nancy devoted her time to being the perfect wife and mother, and caretaker for my aging, ailing grandmother, and as a result, she drove us all insane.

  When I was entering high school and Coral had already left for college, Dad started splitting his time between the Vermont office and company headquarters in New York City. But even though this upped our income considerably, and my grandmother had passed away, Nancy didn’t want to leave Chatwick. She says she didn’t want to uproot us, but I think she couldn’t handle the lifestyle change of moving to a community where she didn’t feel she belonged. She never settled in to the idea that she no longer had to struggle for every little thing; being too comfortable made her nervous because she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  It used to drive Coral up the wall, having old things and used clothes when we could have afforded the latest and greatest. But then again, what didn’t drive Coral up the wall about our mother? It’s lucky for Nancy that I was the one home when my dad was gone and not Coral; Nancy would have ended up wrapped around a tree or in a ditch somewhere.

  This morning, I’m grateful for Nancy’s frugality. Despite my best efforts to deny my homesickness, I can’t help but smile as I run my palms over the worn-out cotton that is somehow always cool to the touch even after eight hours of sleeping on it. Perhaps my childhood was less than ideal (whose wasn’t?), but in this bed, in this room, I was always safe. Just like last night, surveying my unchanged room makes me feel like Kathleen Turner in that movie where she is suddenly transported from middle age back to her high school years. As I sit up in bed, I half expect the mirror above my dresser to reflect a girl in a poodle skirt and a letter sweater.

  Along with the yellowing white desk where I used to write atrocious poetry and maudlin short stories, the closet and dressers still stuffed with clothes that haven’t fit me since high school, and the Eminem poster on my wall (which makes me cringe), my bed is just where I left it, flush against the wall with the double windows that face the street. This was the only true surprise about the state of my room, as Nancy always threatened to move the bed away from the radiator the second I left the house. She claimed to worry about it being a fire hazard, but really, she just has a thing about everything in the room being perfectly centered. I’ve always had a thing about looking out the window from my nice, toasty bed. It was a never-ending battle that I seem to have won.

  It’s a beautiful, sunny morning, and when I peel back the lacy white curtain, the view is exactly the same as I remember, except perhaps for everything being a little smaller. The maple trees that line the street, the ones we used to feel so brave for climbing to the top of, seem to have shrunk. The one in front of the Menkins’ house, the one Danny fell out of and broke his arm, has a couple branches hanging that need to be removed. The yellow paint of the Flemings’ house is peeling off in large chunks. These are facts Nancy no doubt laments every day on the phone to her sponsor, who reminds her she must “accept the things she cannot change.” I have to crane my head to look down at our front porch, where the half-size whiskey barrels spill over with the impatiens Nancy plants every spring. It’s fall now, and soon they will be dead.

  Dead. Like Danny.

  The thought enters my mind and sucks all the nostalgic air right out of the room. Suddenly, the charming view outside my window changes. Now it’s nighttime. Little eight-year-old Danny is bathed in the light from the streetlamp, his fist full of rocks minus the few he’s expertly aimed at my window to wake me up. He holds his finger up to his mouth and points to the back of the house. This image has haunted my dreams for years, but especially frequently in the last couple months. It was a sign that I ignored. Danny needed me, but I didn’t answer the taps at my window.

  I would give anything to rewind a few months. To pick up the phone and reach out to him. Maybe it would have made a difference to hear from me, to know that I had never stopped caring about him. Probably not. The time I really could have made a difference is when we were young. Thinking about it now, what I can’t believe is how little we were. I shouldn’t have known yet how to take care of someone’s wounds. How to keep secrets that big. But I did, because I had already kept my mother’s illness hidden for years.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” My mom’s voice jars me away from the window, where Danny’s wounded face still stares up at me. I feel wetness on my cheeks and realize I’m crying. I try to wipe away the evidence, but Nancy doesn’t miss a thing when she’s sober, which she’s been for eleven years next May as far as I know.

  “Oh,” she says. The sound seems to escape her mouth by accident. Her tall, slim figure makes a few jerky movements back and forth, as if she is arguing with herself whether to bolt or to comfort a daughter who has called her by her first name since she was sixteen years old. In the end, I think she realizes she has no choice but to try. She sits on my bed and rests her hand on mine. My knees are tucked into my chest with my arms clutched tightly around me, my default position when I’m upset. She squeezes, hoping it will trigger me to unwrap and fall into her like I did when I was a child. It won’t work this time.

  “How are you doin’?” she asks. Despite living in Vermont since she was fifteen, Nancy retains a hint of her southern drawl. I used to get embarrassed when she would ask my friends “How are y’all?”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Sweetheart, you are not fine. How could you be fine?”

  “Where were you last night?” I ask, my tone coming off more accusatory than I intended in my haste to change the subject. In truth, I was mostly relieved when she wasn’t home when I returned from the nightmare at Danny’s house. It gave me a chance to wander through the rooms on my own, examining old photographs and trying to determine from the poses who had just fought with whom before the flash went off. But I had also felt the familiar surge of panic of Nancy being out at night, which I tried to suppress by reassuring myself she’s not my problem anymore.

  She sighs, withdrawing her hand. “I wasn’t at Margie’s, if that’s what you’re askin’ me.”

  “I know. I was there.”

  Her face falls. “Oh, Ruby, did you go lookin’ for me? I think after more than ten years of sobriety, I at least deserve the benefit of the doubt. I may be behind the times but I do have a cell phone you could’ve called.”

  “I wasn’t looking for you. I was with the crew.”

  She nods at this, but I see the slightest hint of a furrowed brow. Does she think I’m dumb enough to follow in her footsteps? “I was at Charlene’s,” she explains. “She called me after y’all left and asked me to come over. I saw you in Blue and I waved, but you didn’t s
ee me.”

  “No, I was a little out of it. In shock, I guess. It’s…a lot.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I shake my head. And what I mean by that headshake is I don’t want to talk about it with you. You couldn’t handle it. I can’t even handle it. But she presses on. “What did yours say? Your letter, I mean. Charlene told me you each got one, but she didn’t tell me what was in ’em.”

  I work hard to make my face weary instead of angry, my default reaction to Nancy’s pushing. “Nancy, I really don’t want to—”

  She raises her hands. “Fine. Fine. Sorry, you don’t want to talk about it.” She sighs, staring out the window. “It just so hard to believe he’s gone. That someone could be here one day and gone the next.”

  “It’s not too hard to believe, considering he spent his time shooting up in his basement and writing hate mail.”

  Whoa.

  I don’t know where that came from. A minute ago, I was feeling guilty, making excuses for him, and now I feel like screaming. It might be that old default reaction wriggling its way back in. At least I hold back my comment on being familiar with the concept of here one day and gone the next, due in no small part to her and my father.

  Nancy’s sympathetic face falls into a frown. She is disappointed I am reacting in anger rather than sadness. Sadness she can hug. Anger she must be cautious of, because she knows what it’s really aimed at. Or rather, who. “Ruby St. James, I am disappointed in you. I raised you better than to judge people on their weaknesses.”

  This is true, although it was less a conscious instillation of values than a by-product of growing up constantly navigating the tumultuous waters of her weaknesses.

  “I guess I’m just a little tapped out on empathy. I know you’ve told me a million times that addiction is a disease, just like bipolar disorder or heart disease”—suddenly I feel nauseated, thinking that I now know people who have all of these conditions—“but people can make a choice to get better. Look at you! You’ve managed to control yourself.”