Jude’s eyes got big and he opened his mouth in a real gasp. I felt a powerful relief that was distracting. I paused an extra beat before I realized that it was still my turn to talk.
“So. I left town and I never saw him again. And those corporate whistleblowers were somehow quashed. Fired.”
“No legal recourse?”
“Nope. A few of them started their own tech company and—from what I heard—they developed an anti-cyber bullying App called Out The Bullies.
“Interesting name.”
“Well, but as far as I know, they’ve had their struggles actually getting the app to market. I can’t help but wish karma throws them a bone one of these days, you know?”
Jude looked mesmerized. He took my hands in his and said, “Some day I hope to meet Wilson to thank him for being such a complete and utter asshole.”
I had told him the story just to get Out The Bullies into the conversation. I’d read in the paper about Out The Bullies supporting Jude’s big internet privacy win, and I wanted to impress him in a way the real story about the real ex-boyfriend wouldn’t.
And yet, his reaction to me being belittled? Dismissed? It was the most intoxicating thing Jude could have done. I couldn’t pull away from him after that.
He teased me by pulling me by the hips and saying, “Let’s fight about Sarbanes Oxley. You make corporate whistleblowing so damn sexy.”
“Jude!” I playfully slapped him. “Stop it.” But I only meant for him to stop talking. And I showed him what I wanted with my hands and mouth.
Afterward, he ran his hands down the length of me and I savored the way his fingers cooled my skin. I kissed him gently and then fiercely until he pulled away. “What’s this?” Jude traced a long scar along my outer thigh. One I’d grown so used to already and was so faint, I’d forgotten it could feel foreign to a new touch.
“Just one of my many scars, Jude Birch.”
He kissed my scar and I arched my head back toward his distressed wood headboard for round two and wondered if I should be jumping out of that bed and running as fast as I could in some other direction. I said something faintly along those lines as we lay in bed together, exhausted afterward.
Poor Jude. He could never say in campaign speeches (and to his credit, he didn’t bother) that he had a partner who had supported him always. Who had never had a moment’s doubt. In truth, I swirled in doubt from that first moment. I never intended to get in very deep with Jude. I had done my research to impress him, and in turn, I wanted information and I wanted to be able to say I knew him. So I could make a fresh start. A real fresh start.
And yet, I was already in deep. From that first date that was the result of so much research and preparation on my part. Still, I was entirely unprepared for how my heart would fall for Jude.
The heart wants what the heart wants.
As we wrapped up our highly successful first date, and made a second one before kissing goodbye outside his apartment as I waited for my cab, I thought about all the lies I’d told in one day.
And wondered how many Jude had told in return.
The Washington Truth, dated February 14, 2016
Excerpt from the Op Ed piece, by Nate Essuzare
…I wonder if we all woke up in a world where no one could lie anymore—whether we would even want to keep living that way?
Imagine—truly imagine what that means.
Everyone wants to believe they default to truth, right?
But do you?
Where does your truth punch someone else right in the gut?
I hate your choice of movies.
This meal you spent all day making tastes like burnt rubber.
This piece of art you created isn’t all that good.
I don’t love you anymore.
In some ways, love is based on the ultimate lie: I will feel this way about you—and only you—forever.
Do we really want to live in a world where this kind of lie no longer exists?
Exactly.
And do you know what I’ve come to think of as the biggest lie of all?
Charity.
No one really wants to help one another. They do it for the publicity or to attract customers or friends.
Even in the cases of so-called “anonymous” acts of kindness, I think you’ll find that they make sure someone knows. And if not, well the giver knows. And the giver gets a rush from that act of charity. Same as a shot of alcohol, or a drug hit.
That’s right. Giving actually changes your brain chemistry with a release of endorphins similar to that achieved from morphine or heroin. Giving can calm you and relieve stress and anxiety.
Giving acts on your brain just like drugs.
You know what else can give you that same feeling?
Love. In essence, love is an act of charity, too. And an act of selfishness. All everyone’s really trying to do as they go around the world loving and giving is get high. For themselves.
But you’ve never heard that on a first date, have you?
Chapter 4
Following the 3-month post-surgery appointment with Dr. Drake in which he had shown me the competing CT scan images, and I’d almost fainted in his office, and I had to remind him yet again that I really wanted him to call me “Aby,” and not my late mother-in-law’s name, I came home to Brookland to the home I now shared with Jude and cried for the first time since the night of the shooting.
I’d cried a lot that first night. (Dr. Drake’s words, not mine.)
Buckets and buckets of tears into my terrible vending machine coffee and by Jude’s bedside while he was unconscious, and into the phone as I called Huck and Finn.
“Aby, we need to be there,” Huck had said in his bulldog voice.
“Aby, I want to be there,” Finn had said more gently.
“Please, guys. There’s nothing for you to do here but wait. I need you to do the practical things I can’t possibly do right now. Please. These are the real life things I need you to handle while I sit here and wait.”
They had agreed, reluctantly, to carry on the tasks needed to take care of Jude from the outside. I knew how hard these concessions were to make—for both Huck and Finn—which made my gratitude even more enormous.
Within a few hours of the shooting, I had choked out, through tears, instructions for Huck to strategize a press release while I dealt with the medical issues at the hospital—mostly trying to save Jude’s life. I made promises to the universe while he fought for his life.
If he lives, I’ll tell him everything.
Even if it means he’ll leave me.
Just let him live. Please.
I had drowned cup after cup of bad coffee with my tears.
I’d overwhelmed a stranger at the hospital bathroom sink who had the bad timing of being next to me washing her hands while I flooded the sink with my ugly cry tears, trying to collect myself before returning to the waiting room.
And then later that night—or maybe it was early the next morning?—when Jude had made it out of surgery—with a surprisingly optimistic though guarded prognosis, I had been relieved to find myself temporarily out of tears. I’d been able to go about the steps of arranging Jude’s care and further press releases and eventually returning to my work at the Foundation with a fair amount of stoicism I could only assume I’d inherited from my own mother and never noticed before inside of me. Damn her.
No matter. I was grateful when I could finally stop crying.
The gratitude overwhelmed my nagging feeling of hypocrisy. Because when Jude woke up, finally, I did not tell him everything. I told him nothing.
And I kept on waiting.
The day I came home from viewing the new CT scan images with Dr. Drake, the floodgates opened again. I made up an excuse that I had to run to the pharmacy and I left Jude at home—in a rare occasion of being unattended. I drove my car around the block and parked in front of the old Tool & Die Factory Building in our Brookland neighborhood and let the tears flow in deep catha
rtic rivers.
Months and months of pent up sadness—and yes, guilt—cascaded down my face, streaking my neck and my hands as I tried and failed to catch them all.
I told the universe to leave me alone. I’d handle things in my own time.
Guilt.
That’s what drove those tears.
Because while Jude might not be able to lie any more, I still could.
It took some time after the Dr. Drake appointment to settle Jude down for a nap, which I figured he’d need after the exhausting outing to the doctor’s office. After I explained again what Dr. Drake had said, about the filter and his new inability to lie, he seemed distressed in a way he hadn’t seemed in the last few weeks, and while I thought briefly about calling Huck and Finn for help, I managed to muscle through the rest of the day without placing any calls to them.
I wanted to settle Jude on my own, yes. But mostly, I wasn’t ready to give out the news of Jude’s condition to his inner circle. I doubted it would affect them the same way it was affecting me. And Jude, of course.
I called into the office to talk business with my boss, but said not a word about Jude’s newest diagnosis. It’s none of her business, I told myself as I deliberately kept vague when Philomena (known as “Mena” in her inner circle) asked perfunctorily, “How’s Jude today?”
We left unspoken the elephants between us, she and I.
And I didn’t mention Dominic Treese’s surprise curbside visit either. I couldn’t even imagine forming the words: Your father paid me and Jude a little visit today.
After the phone call to Mena Treese, I washed my face and plugged my tear valves by compartmentalizing as I had learned to do so well. I needed to take care of Jude until his caregiver got there. And so I shifted gears deliberately.
I walked into the living room where Jude was sitting.
“Do you need anything, Jude?”
“No. I’m not hungry. And –“ Jude looked off into the space behind me as if considering other possible needs. “I’m not cold either. I feel ok. I’m tired from our trek into the hospital and I feel like I’ll sleep well tonight.”
“Good.” I felt a small wave of relief sandwiched by waves and waves of terror. Something was crawling inside my brain despite all my compartmentalizing.
What would happen next? And next? And next? Everything has changed now.
I thought about Dominic Treese’s words to me over the lowered Mercedes window.
Jude’s shooting? It might not have been as random as you think it was.
Dear Mr. Treese. It turns out I don’t think the shooting was random at all.
I reached for the nearest chair arm and lowered myself into it. I looked around the house, making a mental note of some chores that had to be taken care of in the next few days.
A lightbulb out over the dining room table, and we were out of light bulbs. A mantle that hadn’t been dusted in close to two weeks and was probably going to induce an asthma attack in an already compromised Jude. A stain that looked like red wine on the arm of the couch, and since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed a quiet glass of wine, was likely well set and beyond help by this point. It would need strategic covering, rather than cleaning. I glanced over at my favorite photograph resting on a side table, a picture of the majestic boat, Front Runner, with the St. Michael’s sunset behind her. For me, that photo always represented hope—never more so than recently—so I focused on it for a short while during the silence.
I noticed the pillows on the loveseat across the room were flattened into the corners and needed straightening. Everything else in the room could wait, but for some reason those pillows compelled me to move.
I sighed and pushed myself out of the chair. My feet felt heavy as I walked the short distance to the loveseat. I squeezed and fluffed the pillows until the flamingoes on the fronts of the pillows were restored to their rightful place, facing each other bravely from either side of the sofa.
I’ve always loved flamingoes. Ever since fifth grade, when our usually strict and formal teacher, Mrs. Corso, arranged a last minute field trip: a visit to the local zoo with an actual tour guide. I’d been to the zoo with my mom before; I’d seen the flamingoes before. But I’d never seen them the way I did that day. My mom took the day off and signed up to be a chaperone, a move that surprised, embarrassed, and delighted me all at once.
Zoey, our tour guide, was a bright girl with bleached blonde hair and pink lips that matched the exact shade of her fingernails. She led us around to watch the timed feedings at the monkey cages and alligator pens. Some of the more delicate kids in my class looked away as the alligator chomped down on raw chicken. “Ew gross!” Marley Miller had yelled out. Marley Miller thought everything was gross. I had rolled my eyes and kept on watching the alligator feeding.
When we arrived at the section of the zoo called the “Bird Bath,” Zoey asked, “So. Does anyone know what color baby flamingoes are?”
I’d stared long and hard at the pink flamingoes and thought about how they kind of matched Zoey’s lips and nails. I wondered if she’d ever noticed that, too. I raised my hand. “Pink?”
“Nope!” Zoey looked pleased with herself. And with me, for my wrong answer. So much so I didn’t even really mind being wrong.
“Light pink,” I offered a second answer without raising my hand again, in direct violation of Mrs. Corso’s rules. Mrs. Corso scowled at me, but Zoey looked at me giddily—just as happy with my second wrong answer.
“Nope! See, everyone thinks that. But in reality, flamingoes are born white. Then their diet of shrimp and shellfish turns their coat pink. Within a few years, those flamingoes are no longer white, but the coral color you see here. And everyone sort of forgets that they started out white, and thinks of them as pinkish-colored animals. ”
There was some oohing and ahing from the group, including from me. And some snickers and side conversations from some others in the class, warranting some more Mrs. Corso scowls. My mom and I caught each other’s glances over the heads of the group and gave each other a quick “Who knew?” expression.
“So you know what that means, don’t you?” Zoey had asked.
I didn’t raise my hand this time. No one else did either, giving Zoey a chance to execute on what I can only imagine was her favorite part of the tour. “Like your parents and teachers tell you, you really are what you eat!”
I knew Zoey was wrong of course. But I refrained from telling her what I knew to be true—even then. By then my step-dad had converted from town drunk to starving, but still, generous artist. And my once single mom had become one half of a loving couple. And I’d gone from being the girl who never had parents available for back-to-school night to having a mom who could make time to chaperone the school zoo trip.
So I knew then, and I confirmed later on, that the metamorphizing flamingoes were less a testament to good food choices, and more a testament to the fundamental truth that eventually—with enough practice—you can become something entirely different, and no one will even remember what you were before.
I heard myself sighing again as I fluffed the flamingoes and remembered bright and pink Zoey. I looked over at Jude who was still sitting in his original spot, seemingly oblivious to my angst and sadness and nostalgia.
“Do you mind if I go get a hot bath, Jude?”
I started to walk up the stairs while the words hung in the air meant really to be a rhetorical question, but Jude’s response stopped me.
“Yes, I do mind. I really don’t want to be alone right now. Can you come sit with me?”
I turned and looked at Jude incredulously. Was he seriously not going to let me bathe when I wanted to anymore?
After spending the morning in the cold, sterile hospital looking at disgusting films of Jude’s old and new brain, all I wanted to do was go up to my modern marble-lined bathroom with the radiant heat under the floor, lock the door, hide, and crawl into a warm, sudsy bath. But Jude continued staring at me as I tried to me
asure out a way to escape the room, and he pointed to the spot on the couch next to him. His protective head bandage looked fresh and pristine having just been changed at the hospital that morning.
A kind nurse had taught me how to change his bandage before he had come home months earlier, but after trying it on my own his first week home, I had resorted to letting his caregivers do it as part of their weekly duties. Frankly, I couldn’t look at the scar on Jude’s head without gagging. One day when he was sleeping, the visiting nurse told me that when his hair grew back in, the scar would be less noticeable, and of course with time it would fade. More plastic surgery was possible, too.
“It will never be gone of course. But it will get better,” the nurse had said kindly. I hoped she was telling the truth. It made me wonder if the scar on my leg ever disgusted Jude this way. And that made me hate the scar for a whole new host of reasons.
I stared at Jude still pointing at the couch next to him. I focused on the fresh bandage and exhaled audibly.
Jude noticed. “Oh. Do you not want to sit right now?”
“No, it’s fine. Of course. If that’s what you need. That’s what I want, too.”
After I lied, I walked over to the couch and sat next to Jude. Our arms touched and the intimacy startled me. I still hadn’t gotten completely used to the new intimacy we’d found when Jude got home from the hospital. Of course we hadn’t been intimate for weeks while he was holed up in the hospital bed. But we hadn’t been intimate for weeks before the shooting either.
Jude didn’t seem to remember that.
Before the shooting, Jude had been sleeping in the guest room, and I had been sleeping in our master bedroom—alone—while the space between us grew wider and wider. I hadn’t had time to think about that space while Jude lay in the hospital bed fighting for his life.
But later as we returned home, and Jude naturally wanted to sleep in the master bedroom, I would lie next to him, our arms touching again for the first time in months, our breathing in sync, and I would wonder how long it could last. How long before I would have to share what I knew. And what I had been planning.
Why We Lie Page 4