1 Once Upon a Lie

by Maggie Barbieri

At the end of the third day, Jo called and asked if she could come to the hospital, and Maeve relented, realizing she needed her friend. When she arrived, a panini from Maeve’s favorite salumeria was in one hand and four-pack of little wine bottles in the other. She hoisted the wine bottles in the air and proffered the sandwich.

  “You don’t know what I had to go through to find your favorite cheap Chardonnay in a four-pack,” she said, taking a foam cup from the table beside Jack’s bed and pouring Maeve a glass of wine.

  “I don’t really feel like drinking,” Maeve said, but at Jo’s insistence, she took a sip and found that maybe she did. “Join me?”

  Jo poured two of the bottles into her cup and drank half of it down, making an exaggerated sound of pleasure when she finished. “Hospital rooms and good vino. Ain’t nothing better.”

  Maeve smiled for the first time in what seemed like forever. She peered into the bag and smelled roasted peppers, mozzarella, and some kind of cured meat, realizing that she hadn’t eaten in a very long time. She unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. “Thanks.”

  Jo squeezed her thin frame onto the windowsill, wrapping her arms around her legs and looking out the window, the Hudson in the distance, the best view any of them would ever have. “Not my best hour,” she said.

  Maeve put the sandwich down and took another sip of the wine.

  “The spray paint. The fence,” Jo said, explaining further.

  “Oh. That.”

  “The wedding is this weekend,” Jo said. “The tent is up.”

  “And the fence is vandalized.”

  “And the fence is vandalized,” Jo repeated. “I’m sorry. I have a vengeful streak.”

  You’re not the only one, Maeve thought. “I’m getting that impression,” she said.

  “And you?” Jo asked. “Where were you coming from that night?”

  It was a question she should have been expecting, but she didn’t have a ready answer. “Target,” she finally said. “They’re open late and the girls needed some things.” It was as reasonable an explanation as she could come up with on short notice and one that seemed to satisfy Jo. “Is the paint still there?”

  Jo gave a satisfied smile. “It is. Indeed. You can’t get rid of that many ‘douche bags’ in a few days.” She clapped her hands together, a sound incongruous in the silence of the hospital room. “Mazel tov to the happy couple.”

  “By the way, it’s one word, I think,” Maeve said. “Douche bag, that is.”

  Jo shook her head. “I checked American Heritage. Either way is acceptable.”

  “Good,” Maeve said. “As long as you spelled it correctly, that’s all I really care about.”

  Jo nodded in Jack’s direction; she had yet to look at him directly. “So how’s the old goat? He going to make it?” she asked, the words not conveying what her tone did: she loved Maeve’s father and would be almost as devastated as her friend if he passed.

  Maeve shrugged. “It’s anybody’s guess. I think he’ll pull through. I hope…,” she started, her voice thick with the tears she had been holding back. She cleared her throat. “I hope so, anyway.”

  “The girls been here?”

  She shook her head. “Yes. I don’t want them to see him like this, but he’s their grandfather. I told them to stay home today.” His nose, broken, had turned his eyes black. Other bruises bloomed across his once ruddy complexion, some already turning a green not unlike the shade of his favorite St. Patrick’s Day socks. One leg was in traction, and the opposite arm was set rigid on a board. When he woke up, as she knew he would, he would be in a world of pain with many months of physical therapy ahead of him. She wondered if she should pray for his death so that she didn’t have to witness that.

  “How’s the store?” she asked.

  “Best few days you’ve had in a long time,” Jo said. “I think maybe you should leave it to us from now on.”

  “Fat chance,” Maeve said. “You’ll eat all of the profits and then where will I be?”

  Jo slapped her head, remembering something. “Oh! I forgot to tell you. You remember that family who had the birthday party? The Lorenzos?” she said.

  “How could I forget them?”

  “Get this,” Jo said. “He killed himself.”

  Maeve rearranged her features so that she looked suitably shocked. “He did? What happened?”

  “They found his van at the dam and him at the bottom. He jumped off the fence, apparently. His wife had reported him missing, but it didn’t take long to find him once a park ranger spotted the van.”

  He was dead. There was one less thing she needed to worry about.

  “The whole town’s talking about it. Can you imagine?” Jo asked. “Jumping from the top of the dam? He obviously meant business.”

  “I’ll say,” Maeve said. “That’s got to be what? Ten stories?”

  “At least,” Jo said, warming to the conversation. “And it won’t even be in the blotter because it’s so big. It will get the front page of the Day Timer, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely. They can only fill so much space talking about zoning and empty storefronts.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get a warm and fuzzy vibe from that guy,” Jo continued. “I’ve got a good nose for these things.” She looked over at Maeve. “Boyfriends who aren’t accountants notwithstanding.”

  Maeve polished off the last bite of one half of the sandwich. “How’s that going, by the way?”

  Jo pressed her nose to the window and studied the river. “Good, I guess.” She turned and looked at Maeve. “I really like him. Cop or not.”

  “And he really likes you, I’m guessing.”

  “I guess.” She tried to sound noncommittal, but Maeve could tell it was important to her.

  “Does he still ask about me? The case?”

  “Hasn’t come up,” Jo said.

  Interesting. “So the case is over?”

  “How would I know?” Jo asked. “Now that I know what happened, I don’t care if the person who killed Sean is ever found.” She let out a string of expletives, ending with “rat bastard.”

  “You haven’t told him, have you?”

  Jo shook her head. “I promised you.”

  That was good enough for Maeve. She would trust Jo with her business, her girls, and her life, and now she trusted her with her biggest secret.

  Jo stayed with her until the late afternoon sun slid behind the Palisades across the river and finally, after much prodding from Maeve, relented and agreed to leave. “I’ve got to get up early,” she said. “You know, ‘time to make the doughnuts’ and all.”

  Maeve laughed. She was sorry that this was what it had taken to get Jo to the store on time, but she hoped that this conscientiousness would continue after Jack woke up and got better and Maeve came back.

  Jo walked over to the bed and put her hand on Jack’s arm. “Wake up, you old coot.” She kissed him lightly on the forehead and reached out to Maeve. “Can I give you a hug?”

  Maeve stood and stepped into Jo’s outstretched arms.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Jo whispered. “He’s going to wake up.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Maeve said.

  She was right. Only moments after Jo left, Jack’s eyes fluttered open, staring out into the hospital room, his mind working overtime to get his bearings. Maeve leaned over the bed and put her face in front of his. She talked to him for a few minutes. She told him where he was and what had happened to him. She told him to be strong and to hang on and to make sure that he got better because she needed him more now than ever before. She wanted to ask him where he had been that night, the night that Sean had been murdered, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  His mouth was dry and she gave him a little sip of water, not knowing if that was what she should do. She knew that she should let the nurses or a doctor know that he was awake, but she wanted a few minutes to herself with him before the onslaught of medical professionals poking and prodding and talk
ing to him in the raised voices of hospital staff. It was as if they thought every patient was deaf.

  “Dad?” Maeve said.

  He turned his head slightly, as much as he could given the pain, and looked at her.

  It was then that she was sure he didn’t know who she was.

  CHAPTER 42

  The day before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest the farmers’ market had in their yearly schedule, was always a good one for Maeve, and she looked forward to it every year. Because she was a two-person operation, she did the market only on this day and was grateful that Margo, the market’s coordinator, allowed her to participate one day a year, when customers turned out in droves. The people who approached her little table, under a white “The Comfort Zone” tent, read like a Who’s Who of the village’s most annoying denizens—Marcy Gerson, Julie Morelli, Jody what’s-her-name—but Maeve greeted each with a friendly smile that didn’t reach her eyes, offering a kind word or two about the upcoming holiday. She noticed that that trio in particular never reciprocated with the questions. Why? Because they really didn’t care.

  The outdoor market was located next to a DPW base, the one that held the salt trucks and assorted other pieces of snow-clearing machinery; but as night fell, earlier and earlier as the fall days progressed, all Maeve could see were the other white tents that sheltered the vendors from the early sun and then the light drizzle that began to fall.

  Jo was back at the store and back to her old ways now that Jack was in a rehab facility and Maeve was running the business again. The farmers’ market, according to Jo, made her anxious. The outdoor setting combined with encroaching darkness and the cold temperatures did not suit her skill set. So while she helped Maeve get set up, baking twice as many items for the pre-holiday rush, she opted to stay in the comfort of the store—in her personal comfort zone, as it were—waiting on the slew of customers who wandered in looking for a pie or a cake to bring to their holiday gathering.

  It was not the first time Maeve wondered which of them was boss as she shivered in the pair of insulated Carhartt overalls that Cal had insisted she buy for standing long hours in the cold, a fleece jacket under a down coat, and fingerless gloves that made it easier for her to deal with transactions.

  Marcy had given her the once-over while paying for her apple pie. “That’s a good look for you,” she said, attempting to come off light and humorous but instead making Maeve feel like a dumpy farmhand.

  “It gets cold here in the evening,” she said. “I know forty doesn’t feel cold by most standards, but if you stand out here long enough…,” she started.

  But Marcy had moved on, buying locally sourced parsnips from the vendor a few tents down. Maeve put the twenty in her fanny pack and thrust her hands deep into her overalls pockets. It was dusk. She would have two hours in the dark, and cold, to fulfill before she could take down the tent, pack everything up, and go home to the bottle of Cabernet on her kitchen countertop, waiting to be drunk. Tomorrow would bring its own host of challenges, what with the girls going off with Cal and Jack in the rehab facility. Jo was going to her sister’s in Scarsdale and was taking Doug of the Dockers. It was just Maeve, whatever was left of the Cab, and a quiche that she had made before leaving the store.

  Pathetic, she thought.

  She focused on the business of the market to keep her mind off the prospect of spending Thanksgiving alone, but she wasn’t successful. Thinking about her father, broken and battered and in rehab, coupled with the absence of the girls, was a little too much to process during the empty spaces that existed between sales of pies and bread.

  She took a seat in her camp chair to the side of the table where her goods were arranged with precision, all of the preorders marked with the name of the customer as well as the item inside her signature brown boxes tied with raffia. She surveyed the crowd, seeing a bunch of moms she knew from the one day a year she volunteered at the school bake sale and other people from town who looked familiar but whose names she couldn’t conjure up, her sadness filling in the spaces in her brain where information like that used to be. In the distance she saw Cal, his ubiquitous offspring strapped to his chest, emotional napalm to her at that very moment. She sank lower into the chair and watched her ex-husband—now father and mate of the year, it would seem—wander the various stalls, purchasing produce and fresh bread, a growler of microbrewed beer, and an organic chicken that cost more than three regular supermarket chickens put together. Gabriela was the quintessential well-off Westchester woman and had the exacting culinary standards to prove it. Maeve watched as Cal scanned the crowd, looking through the various tents to find her. He finally approached, his arms laden with bags, the baby looking sullen and depressed in his Hanna Andersson one-piece snowsuit and equally dorky hat. When Cal arrived at her tent, the baby let out a long, wet Bronx cheer to illustrate his displeasure at being dressed like a Scandinavian infant in a land where the sun hardly shone.

  I feel your pain, kid, Maeve thought.

  She rose when Cal approached. “Did you place an order?” she said, jerking his chain. “Everything here is spoken for. You’ll have to go to the A&P if you want a pie.”

  The look on his face was a mix of horror, sadness, and panic.

  “I’m just kidding,” she said, pulling out a pyramid of boxes, all tied together and bearing his name. She placed them on the table. “A pecan pie, some cupcakes, cookies, and lemon bars. That should be enough, right?” she asked.

  Cal went for his wallet. “Yes. Thanks.”

  “No charge,” she said, waving his hand away. “Thanks for helping out with Jack.” Cal had come through, finding a space in the closest rehab facility in the county, riding along in the ambulance as Jack was transferred from the community hospital to what would be his home for the next several months. After a marriage filled with disappointment and sorrow, he had come through, his lumbago taking a backseat to her pain and distress.

  “But there must be fifty dollars’ worth of stuff there,” he said, picking up the box pyramid, rocking slightly back and forth to keep the baby quiet.

  More like eighty, but she didn’t correct him. “It’s on me. Enjoy the holiday.”

  “How’s Jack?”

  “Coming along,” she said, and left it at that. She wondered every minute of every day what the impact of the accident would have on his fading mental agility and waited for the day when he no longer looked at her and saw only an attractive middle-aged mom who could make a mean cupcake and not his dear, devoted Mavy. She prefaced every visit with a loud “It’s me, Dad. Your daughter, Maeve,” so that he had some frame of reference. She couldn’t bear to think that he had forgotten her, his Mavy, the most perfect little girl in the world. She swallowed hard, hot tears pressing at the backs of her eyes, sobs climbing up her throat.

  Cal, not one to plumb the depths of despair, or any emotion, for that matter, changed the subject to one that he didn’t know was equally fraught. “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked. He put his wallet back in his pocket.

  She was quick to lie, not wanting to see the pity on his face, now ruddy from the cold air. “Going to the parade,” she said brightly. “I haven’t been since I was little and I wanted to go. I’m meeting some friends in the city,” she said.

  He looked relieved. “That’s great. Who are you meeting?”

  “Old CIA friends. Then,” she said, elaborating further and creating a nice scenario in her head, “we’re going downtown for dinner. Great day.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” he said a little wistfully. She imagined that his day would be taken up with child care and household chores, followed by hours of cooking with only minimal help in the preparation and cleanup. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Back in the day, Maeve was responsible for all of that and then some, but it seemed that Gabriela had come from other stock, the kind where you married and then lapsed into some kind of domestic semicoma that required someone else to do the heavy lifting. “Would it help if I picked the girls up after I lea
ve here? That way, you don’t have to worry about getting them out the door in the morning.”

  “That would be great,” she said.

  “Good,” he said, looking down at Devon’s Martian-themed hat, the antennae moving with every shake of his little head. “So, have fun at the parade.”

  “Thanks,” she said. Something was off. He was trying to be his usual jocular self, but there was something under the surface, an emotion she couldn’t put her finger on. She waited, and in those seconds, a thousand thoughts went through her head. He’s sick. He’s going back to work. He didn’t save enough money for Rebecca’s college tuition. He still loved her and had made a huge mistake.

  That he was leaving Gabriela wasn’t one of them.

  Cal looked around. “This isn’t going to work,” he said suddenly.

  “Thanksgiving?” Maeve asked, her hopes up that she’d misread him completely and that she would have the girls for the day. She started compiling a shopping list in her head of everything she would need to prepare the best Thanksgiving meal the girls had ever had, even though in her heart she knew that he was talking about something else entirely.

  “No,” he said, and she noticed that he was trying not to cry. She had seen him cry only once before, and that was when he told her that he was leaving her for her former friend. He waved a hand around; it landed on the baby’s head after a few gestures. “This. Gabriela. My life. It’s not going to work.”

  Behind him, a small line was starting to form and Maeve recognized a few regular customers, some of whom had orders that were ready and needed to be picked up. She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly warm in her workman’s thermal overalls. “Cal, let’s get together later,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I can’t really talk about this right now.”

  He shook his head, pushing his shoulder-length hair—the longest she had ever seen it—off his face. He rubbed the baby’s head as if it were a Buddha belly and straightened up. “Right. I know. I’ll go get the girls now.”

  And then he was gone, no sight of him in the throngs of holiday shoppers milling around the parking lot of a DPW-site-cum-farmers’-market, their arms filled with packages of overpriced foodstuffs that made them feel better about their contribution to saving the environment and local business. Maeve handed out all of the orders that had been placed and surveyed the table, noting that all she had left were three peasant breads, an apple pie, a challah, and a few loaf breads, which would mean that her take for the day would be more than fifteen hundred dollars, something that cheered her in spite of the fact that she was still in a funk over the prospect of a solitary Thanksgiving and now had an ex-husband who would soon be into two women for child support and in Gabriela’s case, most likely, alimony, even though she was the primary breadwinner. She wouldn’t put anything past her husband’s second wife; if anyone could con a judge into that scenario, it was Gabriela.