Why We Lie

by Amy Impellizzeri

  Jude is acting strangely, Dr. Drake.

  That was the best description of symptoms I’d been able to muster. The physical therapists and the occupational therapists kept telling me to be patient. That Jude was making extraordinary progress. But I wasn’t sure the progress was in the right direction. And I might even have thought I had overreacted, that I was crazy, if I wasn’t sitting with Dr. Drake, looking at the two disparate brain pictures right that moment.

  Something was off in Jude’s brain.

  I knew it. I felt it. And now, with Dr. Drake’s help, I could see it.

  “It’s just that his brain is replacing prefrontal white matter with excessive amounts of grey matter. He seemed to have a higher than average ratio of grey to white to begin with so it appears that his brain is over-compensating. And so of course his multi-layer thought processing has been dramatically affected.”

  “Dr. Drake, I’m sorry. I know I misled you into thinking that because I’m a fairly intelligent woman that I can handle all this medical mumbo jumbo stuff, but I have absolutely no idea what this means. I’m staring at Jude’s brains—brain, I’m sorry, of course, he only has one brain. What’s wrong with me? But—even though I’m looking at the same thing you are, and listening so very carefully, still, I can’t make sense of this. Are you saying that Jude’s brain has changed since his surgery? That’s the reason for his—well, his outbursts?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Is it like, Tourette’s or something?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “So, what?”

  “Aby, Jude has lost the filter of his prefrontal cortex.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, for one thing, it means he can’t lie.”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say he can’t lie? Like can’t lie down?”

  “No, not like that. Jude can’t tell an untruth.”

  “Hell of a problem for a politician,” I gave into my natural impulse and laughed uncomfortably. Jude sat quietly next to me, and Dr. Drake didn’t join in the laughter either.

  “I’m sorry. Dr. Drake, are you actually serious? This is my husband’s brain’s funny way of healing itself? He’s perfectly fine in all ways, except that he can’t lie?”

  “I’m completely serious, Mrs. Birch.”

  “Please. I’m begging you. Please call me Aby.”

  Later when Dr. Drake was done with us, Jude and I sat in the room alone, waiting for a computer print-out summarizing the visit, and I studied the films again.

  When the CT technologist came back in to pull down the copies of the films, I greeted her. “It turns out my husband’s brain has over-compensated so much that he can no longer lie. This is the reason he’s survived his near fatal wound, actually.”

  She looked at me blankly. “Well, the doctor doesn’t share diagnoses with me, ma’am. I just take the pictures.”

  I nodded, understanding. I took in her colorful scrubs in direct contrast to the doctor’s slate grey scrubs that had recently exited the room. I’d learned that in hospital hierarchy, the more decorative the scrubs, the less information you could get from the wearer. Clearly, Jude’s diagnosis was above the technologist’s pay grade. But she had worked so hard for us. I decided I’d reward her with the inside scoop.

  “It turns out he’s perfectly fine, except that he can’t lie anymore,” I advised the technologist, wanting someone, anyone, to acknowledge the craziness of this new diagnosis.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear the Congressman is doing well.” The technologist looked anxious to leave.

  I let her and then I wondered to myself why I kept saying: “perfectly fine, except.”

  Because was it really such a bad thing that he couldn’t lie?

  Was it the worst thing that could have happened? To him? To us?

  I leaned far back in my chair with the newly delivered prognosis, waiting for the nurse to come back in.

  No. It wasn’t the worst thing that had happened. Not by a long shot.

  But it might just be the worst thing that could happen next.

  I left Dr. Drake’s office, pushed the down button outside the elevator doors, and stepped inside moments later when the doors opened loudly, all hand in hand with a silent Jude. What had once been a customary act of endearment between us had taken on new significance since the shooting. Jude was easily tired, disoriented even. Outings could be arduous. Medical appointments could be exhausting. I was usually leading him, pushing him, or prodding him along when we went out in public these days. It might have looked like holding hands, but it was more than that. In the elevator, Jude finally broke his silence.

  “Is that what Dr. Drake meant, Aby?”

  “What do you mean, Jude?” I was distracted on my phone, scrolling through some work emails with my free hand, trying to figure out how many of them could wait until the next day. I was so tired.

  “I couldn’t really follow what he was saying. But I heard you talk to the tech. My brain? It’s ok, except now I can’t lie? That’s what the doctor meant?”

  “Um hum.” I squeezed his hand in mine. “Don’t you worry, Jude. That’s not such a big deal, is it?” He stared off into space, and I took a few deep breaths to try to quash the rising panic in my throat that wanted to scream out.

  Jude’s not being able to lie was a very big deal.

  Dr. Drake’s office was in a section of the hospital that had valet parking and after we headed outside the ground level of the building’s automatic doors, I handed the valet our claim check and a $5 bill and waited on the curb with Jude for the valet to bring our car around. It took a few minutes, and as I saw our own car pull up, I briefly noticed a black Mercedes pull up to the curb behind our valet. No one got in or out of the Mercedes as it sat there, not even as I helped Jude into the passenger side and then walked around to my side. Something tugged at my subconscious as it noticed that fact.

  The valet closed the driver side door for me attentively as I got in. I glanced in the rear view mirror to see the driver of the car behind me, but between the glare and the dark windows of both of our cars, I couldn’t make anyone out.

  “Are they with you?” I asked the valet gesturing to the Mercedes. The valet glanced back, shook his head quickly, and then said, “Have a nice day, Mrs. Birch,” as he pocketed some cash and ran up to greet the next patient exiting the building. This was a hospital and staff used to dealing with high level dignitaries and politicians. Discretion was a way of life. As were kickbacks. I thought about the bills the valet had just pocketed. They could have been a randomly timed coincidence with the arrival of the car behind me, but I didn’t think so.

  I hadn’t asked for any security to follow us to or from Dr. Drake’s office that day, given the last-minute nature of the appointment, and now I regretted my carelessness. Jude wasn’t warranting round-the-clock security yet. We were still working on that.

  Despite everything that had happened in the weeks leading up to the election, the local police had already investigated his shooting in the days and weeks immediately following, and they had resolved that, just as the press had initially reported, he’d been the victim of errant gunfire of some local gang bangers who had a history of shooting up that particular block and who seemed to have gone on the lam shortly after the shooting.

  Jude’s shooting had become part of the political rhetoric for the D.C. mayor who was constantly begging for more federal resources to erase the gangs and drug lords from the urban landscape of our nation’s capital. I didn’t really believe that version of the incident, but I had more important things keeping my attention, like Jude’s recovery and healing, our future, and now—his brand new bizarre diagnosis.

  I sat behind the wheel, still parked on the curb, trying to shake the feeling that the dark car situated behind me was something to be concerned about. I pulled up the block a bit, still within view of the valet station, but trying to get out of the way of it. I stayed close to the curb without pulling into the traffic. T
he Mercedes behind me mirrored my actions, hugging the curb. I glanced at Jude in the passenger seat, looking tired and worn from the day’s activities, but also oblivious. I gave another glance at the valet station. There were enough people, including a hospital security guard, within earshot and view, to empower me to get out and confront the car behind me.

  Better to do it now, than to let the car follow me home.

  I walked up to the driver side window, which I saw was being lowered to greet me. As if the driver had been expecting me. “Mrs. Birch. Sorry if I startled you. I wanted to check on Jude. He’s doing better, yes?”

  I couldn’t help but gasp.

  After all, he was the last person I expected to see. Or to be inquiring about Jude’s health.

  “Mr. Treese. You did startle me. How’d you know I was here? That we were here?” I felt an ominous sense of foreboding. Maybe this confrontation idea was a bad one.

  “Listen, Aby. I know we haven’t exactly been on the same side of the political table lately.”

  I stifled another inappropriate laugh as that was an understatement for sure.

  “But I have something very important to say to you. Be careful about who you trust. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Jude’s shooting? It might not have been as random as you think it was. Just don’t dismiss that possibility, ok? You might want to ask the police to re-open the case. That’s all I wanted to say. Goodbye, Aby.”

  Dominic Treese put the window up, pulled away from the curb and drove around me, leaving me to analyze his warning.

  I shuddered as he drove away. After all, he was the man who had tried hard to help Jude’s adversary defeat him in the recent Congressional election. Treese was right; we hadn’t been on the same side in politics.

  Still, I had lots of suspicions about Jude’s shooting. And lots of guilt. I couldn’t say for sure that Dominic Treese was wrong.

  And as I watched him drive away, I wondered exactly what Dominic Treese knew that I didn’t.

  Chapter 3

  Poetically, exactly one year—to the day—before I learned that my husband had actually lost his ability to lie, Jude stood in a crowded loft in Northeast in front of 500 paying guests and promised to be honest always. “If elected, it will be my great honor to serve with humility and authenticity.”

  The blur of the lights of Brookland speeding past was hypnotizing as Jude and I raced along Michigan Avenue on our way from our home to the rented loft space where Jude was scheduled to make his big announcement. He was officially entering a special election added to the fall schedule, to fill a brand new seat in the House of Representatives—a new Congressional representative for the District of Columbia.

  Maybe the rest of the country was focused on bigger things, but the buzz leading up to the announcement had been electric in our little circle.

  “A formal announcement of the worst kept secret in D.C. since Marilyn Monroe.” That’s how The Washington Truth—a small but earnest press with a cult-like following in D.C.—leading the way for every other larger news outlet—would report it the next day. And everyone who was anyone in D.C. would become part of our days and nights.

  We’d been to events like these before. Classic Washington events with politicians and donors and more than enough booze to lubricate both groups. “Two-drink minimum is also a two drink maximum,” Jude always sang into my ear when we headed into the room. We’d been auditioning in the D.C. political scene for years, and by then, each event was starting to take on a similar feel to the last one.

  Except that night. That night was … magical. Because we weren’t heading into an event for someone else that night. We were heading into a night that was for Jude. For us. Everything we had sacrificed and worked for. All the lines crossed, and boundaries blurred—for this. It felt worth it in that moment. It really did.

  Jude had been visibly elated as we headed into the Freedom Art loft space rented out by his fundraising committee, which at that point was still him and his two law school roommates doing business as Friends of Jude Birch.

  I have to admit, though it runs counter to all I’ve tried to achieve since first arriving in D.C. years ago, I loved being on Jude’s arm as we entered the room that night. I had spent weeks picking out my dress. Business but sexy. Trendy but classic. Appropriate but daring. In the end, after non-stop boutique and designer exclusive shopping, I ultimately decided on something a bit more understated. I picked something from an online shop—an MM.LaFleur design that I admired on the website with a cashmere-like softness when it arrived and peplum pleats that helped me lose no less than 10 pounds in my hips the moment I put it on. No matter that it was an online find. Maybe someone else would be wearing it, but they wouldn’t look like this in it, I told myself. And it was black. Not like the latest vividly colored line from the runway that would be recognizable instantly. I paired the dress with my Louboutin heel splurge from the last season ($550 on eBay for “Worn One Time” shoes and an extra $20 for sole guards that I put on every time I went out to try to preserve the distinctive red soles). I was also wearing my favorite necklace: a cascading turquoise and glass bead monstrosity that my mother had bought from a glass blower in Bermuda on her honeymoon with my step-dad, and brought home to me as a “souvenir.” I touched the necklace and let the emotion of missing my mother wash over me.

  Because it was so powerful—the loss—I only let it enter my consciousness every so often. She would have loved to see me wearing the necklace. She would have loved Jude, too, of course. But she would have hated so much else about my life. I shook off the emotion and sealed my mother out of my brain for the rest of the night. My mother—dead or not—had no place at Jude’s campaign event, I told myself.

  After we walked into the event, I had to relinquish Jude to the Friends of Jude Birch, while I practiced the role of a Congressman’s partner—gabbing and making small talk, and remembering who was who, who was sleeping with whom, and whose wives didn’t know about the latter. Jude practically danced around the room flanked by his buddies, Huck and Finn. I caught his eye and smiled. I heard his laugh float across the room. “No, no, those aren’t their real names. It’s a long story actually.”

  Harvey “Huck” Whitman, III and Jude met the first week of law school at George Washington bonding over legal briefs and Pfalsgraf (whatever that was). A few weeks later, Huck and Jude had agreed to grab beers after class at the Foggy Bottom neighborhood bar where Huck was meeting his roommate, Carl Merrow, IV, a fellow law student, but a year ahead. Legend had it that after about four Guinesses, Jude slapped Harvey “Huck” Whitman, III and Carl on the backs and announced that there was no way he was going to be able to remember their full names, and was going to call the duo Huck and Finn for ease of reference. A new nickname was born, and an unbreakable bond among the trio.

  Only days before law school started, Jude was still living with his college girlfriend—a debutante from McClean, Virginia, whose father had bought she and her seemingly soon-to-be fiancé a lovely townhome in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. The plan was for the couple to live there and for Jude to commute to GW, while Cindy commuted to her internship position on the Hill. The arrangement lasted through the summer between college and law school, at which point Cindy broke up with Jude for not being “intense enough,” a quality Jude swore to me in later conversations was not something he had ever promised to be. In fact by law school orientation, he said with a laugh, “I was quite intense. She probably should have held out a few more days.”

  In truth, he said, Cindy most likely was comparing him (both sexually and intellectually) to the fellow intern from the Hill that she had started sleeping with at some point during the summer (July as best he could figure), and kicked Jude out to make more room for the guy who was going to start sleeping over more often while Jude spent his nights holed up in the law library.

  So when Huck and Finn met Jude, Jude was actually crashing on couches of old college fraternity brothers, who were a few years older and
had relocated to D.C., and with whom he'd reconnected through Facebook; they were, Jude had to admit, growing bored with their free-loading resident. Since Huck and Finn’s roommate had recently exited their extra Foggy Bottom bedroom with three months’ rent, a substantial heroin addiction, and also the big screen TV, Jude was invited to move in by Guiness number five for the cost of a TV and no security deposit. The trio of “Huck, Finn and Jude” was born and perhaps they would have moved about the world just the three of them forever, but for that night outside a bar on H Street where I was waiting, as the trio was exiting one night a few years out of law school.

  Under the exposed beams of the Freedom Art loft space, I looked at my watch and noticed the time was getting close for Jude to be announced. I caught Huck’s eye and waved across the room to him. He was rolling his eyes discreetly to show his disdain for the woman he was stuck in conversation with. I laughed and held my wrist up and pointed to it reminding him visually that it was almost time for the big moment.

  “What are you thinking about gorgeous?”

  Jude came around the corner then and surprised me as I was surveying the crowd and trying to keep Huck on schedule across the wide plank-floored room. Jude stood behind me and wrapped his arms around the neckline of my dress from behind and rested his head on the top of my head in his signature move. Even with my Louboutin heels, I barely reached Jude’s chin. He had to duck down to kiss me and whenever he snuck up behind me like this, he rested his chin on my head in an equally affectionate gesture.

  I leaned forward away from Jude’s chin to give Huck one more watch-pointing mime signal and then leaned into Jude’s backwards embrace. “I was thinking about the night I broke down in front of Little Miss Whiskey’s.”

  “Ah yes,” Jude whispered into my hair warming me down to my toes. “If not for that rusty 2001 Hundai, we might not even be standing here today.”

  I laughed and leaned farther into Jude. “Oh, I have a feeling you’d still be here. But I would have had to buy my ticket.” Jude spun me around until I was facing him, dizzy from the stilettos, the rosé, and the night. I closed my eyes and felt Jude’s lips on each one of my eyelids, another of our paired moves. “Now. Listen up, Aby. Because I might forget to say this tonight and every night after today. Everything I am right now. Everything I’m planning on doing. Everything that is about to happen. It’s because of you, Sweetheart. You are my gift. You are my muse. And I couldn’t do any of this without you. I love you.”