Oh my God, I’m jealous that Mena forgives her mom.
Mena hated her mother’s controlling nature, her self-righteousness, and her hypocritical dependence on the lifestyle Dominic Treese provided. Yet, she forgave her anew every time she was with her. I’d seen them interacting comfortably in the coffee shop that day, and again that night as we worked on the grant proposal together. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Mena seemed to genuinely forgive her mother’s shortcomings. And for this, I was jealous.
At her funeral, I stood up and talked about how amazing my mother was. I’d loved how she worked early and late shifts so that she was there every day when I got off the school bus. She’d make celery logs with peanut butter and raisins and tease me that I was eating ants on a log as I gobbled them up.
She saved up for weeks to take me dress shopping for dances and clothes shopping when each new season of school struck. She helped volunteer at school as much as she could, and made homemade cupcakes for my birthday—never store bought. She helped with homework—she was a whiz at Math and always read my summer reading selections along with me so we could discuss them.
After the funeral, Kane suggested I get back into counseling, so I did. I went to a counselor who supposedly specialized in grief management. Apparently that’s a thing and I was willing to have my grief managed. I even signed up for some local grief support groups.
But I stopped going when I discovered something troubling about all my grief-stricken comrades. People in grief change history. They tell stories about their loved ones that simply can’t be believed. They remember them as superheroes. They remember them as perfect people who never made any mistakes, who never did anything wrong, and who they would trade places with to have back on this earth. In other words, people in mourning lie.
And that made me doubt my own recollection of my mother. Maybe she wasn’t as perfect as I remembered. I hated that. I picked at the doubt until it became an open wound.
After all, she did betray me one critical time. She didn’t believe me when it came to Rafe Wilson.
And she’d tried taking away the one thing I was so good at: lying.
I can’t remember the first lie I told.
But I remember the first lie my mom caught me in. I was five years old. I’d just started school, and it was “Bring Your Dad to School Day,” a notion I’ve come to understand is as outdated as bikinis in the Miss America Contest.
My mother agreed.
When I brought home the paper announcing the upcoming event, she marched right into school with a litany of questions for the teacher.
Didn’t everyone’s family look different these days? Two moms or one single dad and Grandmas raising babies? Why were we still pretending that families all looked the same? And that square-shaped families could be smashed into round-shaped holes with silly things like “Bring Your Dad to School Day?”
The teacher, instead of apologizing for the trauma that might have been caused to me, nodded politely, sent my mom home and then called her in the following week to tell her I’d been stealing the school supplies of the girl next to me and blaming it on another little boy who didn’t even sit in our row.
I think it’s important to point out that the little boy I’d accused of stealing the stuff had a very handsome, impressive father that he’d brought to school on the “Bring Your Dad to School Day” that went forward despite my mom’s best efforts.
So did the little girl whose stuff I stole.
At the follow-up conference, I remember that my mother had tried to explain to perky Miss Jenner that I was simply acting out, and that this had to be “normal” behavior. But Miss Jenner shook her head sternly. “I assure you, Ms. Boyle, there’s nothing normal about this.”
I wanted my mother to fight for me. To tell Miss Jenner to take her little version of “normal” and shove it, but instead, my mother nodded and took a piece of paper from Miss Jenner that had the name and number of a child psychologist, Dr. Hugh Filbert, who could fit me in sometime over the next two to four months.
Dr. Filbert thought maybe I had ADHD and prescribed some medicine that my mom was supposed to sprinkle on my applesauce. I wouldn’t eat it, and to this day, I can’t even look at applesauce without gagging. My mom gave up on the medicine and on Dr. Filbert in pretty short order. In return, I worked on keeping the lies to a minimum, and life ebbed and flowed. Kane came into our lives a few years later. He brought with him a type of stability that soothed the edges on both of us. It became easier and easier not to lie anymore.
Until my mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was in high school.
Three weeks after my mom sat me down to tell me she had a disease that was going to kill her, she sat me down again to ask whether I’d eaten the last of the special brown rice cereal she’d bought as part of her macro cancer diet. Someone had left the empty box tipped over in the pantry.
I remained steadfast. “I am telling you, Mother. I did not eat the cereal. You are going to have to ask Kane.”
“I did ask Kane. Even though he hates the brown rice cereal and would rather eat maggots, his words, not mine, still I asked him, and he confirmed that he did not eat the cereal.”
“Then you must have eaten it and forgotten.” We stared at each other icily.
“Why are you doing this, Chelsea?” Her expression turned to fear. I hated that I’d caused that, but I couldn’t back down.
“Because I didn’t eat the cereal.”
My mom arranged for me to get back in therapy right away. This time it was Dr. York. Dr. York didn’t want to talk about ADHD and medication, so I paid a little more attention to her.
She had an idea for me. She advocated that I take up a new form of physical exercise as an outlet for my frustration and anger. She said the emotions I was feeling were understandable for a girl my age who’d just learned her mother has cancer.
I liked her words; I just didn’t feel much like exercising. I didn’t feel much like doing anything. But then one day, after a brutal day of chemo, when my mom was sick and spent on the bathroom floor, I laced up old sneakers with no arches left and worn soles, dug out of the bottom of my closet, and yelled into the bathroom, where my mother was heaving, and Kane was rubbing her back in small circles the way she liked, “Bye guys! I’m headed out for a run!”
I had no plan. My legs took me out of our residential neighborhood to the town square, along Walnut, Filbert, and eventually to Canal Street. I got a side stitch outside a motorcycle shop on Canal Street, and stopped to catch my breath and rub my side. The adrenaline and the fresh air running through my body helped me forget about brown rice cereal, chemo, and my mom’s death sentence.
I was flushed and still massaging my side on the sidewalk, when a boy came out of the shop about my age. He was wearing a dark, worn tee-shirt and ripped jeans. He smelled of gasoline, musky cologne, and faintly of bleach. I recognized him from school, although we didn’t have any classes together, but I was pretty sure he was in my grade. He smiled at me and time stopped for a moment as I studied his dimples.
“You ok?” He broke the silence first.
Presumably because I was still sucking wind and trying to catch my breath. I silently nodded in response.
“Want some water?”
I nodded again.
He waved me inside the shop, and I followed him into a room that smelled like him, only bigger. It was set up like a lounge with leather couches and chairs, and beyond it was an open garage lined with motorcycles in various stages of repair and disrepair. But no people. No customers and no other workers. “You the only one here?” I found my breath. I wasn’t nervous. I just wondered.
“Yeah. The shop’s actually closed today.”
“Ah, it’s Sunday.” I got my bearings and remembered my mother had been scheduled for chemo on Sunday because she was an emergent case.
The ramifications of that hit me for the first time as I thought: Her prognosis must be so much worse than she has even let on.
I giggled inappropriately at the thought, and then caught the boy looking at me funny, as he asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing. I just—nothing. Thanks for the water offer.” I smiled up at him reminding him.
“Oh, that’s right.” He motioned for me to take a seat on the lounge chair and he walked around a counter where I caught a glimpse of a small refrigerator stationed out of reach of patrons. I blushed to think that he was reaching into the employee private stash to get me some water. I hoped vaguely that he wouldn’t get in trouble for raiding the employee frig.
“Do you want regular water? Or Gatorade? You look like you could use a little electrolyte replenishing.” I smiled at him. He reddened and I liked that. He pushed a misbehaved clump of hair out of his eye nervously while he waited for my answer.
“Electrolytes it is. Got any orange?”
“Yes!” He looked surprised as he responded enthusiastically. “That’s actually my favorite flavor, so I always keep plenty in the frig.”
“Really? No one ever likes orange. I feel like a freak whenever I ask for it.”
He came back around the counter and handed me an orange Gatorade bottle. “Not a freak,” he assured.
“Thanks,” I took the bottle from him, feeling a little jolt after I purposely let our fingers touch. “I’m Chelsea Boyle. We go to the same school.”
Right after I said it, I looked down, mortified that he might not have ever noticed me and now I’d admitted that I had noticed him.
“I know you, Chelsea,” he said familiarly.
“Oh.” I looked back up at him startled.
“You handed me a water at field day last year?”
“Oh!” I said again, but this time, with recognition. The year before, the freshmen had been in charge of concessions at the school-wide field day. Demi, the most popular girl in the class, and stereotypical mean girl, and her Posse (who actually called themselves that as if they were trying to cast for a Grease sequel or something) had made sure that I had been relegated to the worst position possible—the grill stand. The grill stand was terrible because it turned everyone into a hot, sweaty mess, and also because it meant you had to be supervised by the parent volunteers helping out for the day. Demi and her Posse worked the snow cone maker which was darling and delicious and required no parental supervision at all, so the freshman girls tied their tee shirts in midriff-baring knots, flirted mercilessly with the older boys, and cemented their place among the cool kids.
It wasn’t a particularly happy memory for me, but there had been that one bright light. A boy had come up to the grill, looked me in the eye and asked me for a water. Even though there was a water stand nearby manned by some football players moonlighting as freshman volunteers, still he’d asked me for a water.
I had allowed myself a moment’s daydream that day that the boy had seen me across the crowded football field, littered with cheerleaders and other pretty girls, and had sought me out. But he had nodded a quick thanks and run off back to his group, and the moment passed, and I hadn’t given the whole encounter a second thought until the day of that run. And if asked, I would have bet real money he didn’t either.
But he did.
He had.
I remembered his name. I had asked one of the parents standing nearby, a clueless dad, who didn’t care why I was asking, but looked over his shoulder while flipping a burger, and told me nonchalantly.
“Rafe Wilson,” I breathed his name out loud emerging from the memory of the moment I’d first learned it.
“Yep, that’s me. I guess that’s why you decided to make a pit stop here? Finally, get me to repay the favor?”
His mouth turned up in a playful smirk, but I was sure he was serious. I was mortified.
“No. What? I didn’t stop here on purpose. I didn’t even know you work here. I mean, not that if I knew you worked here, I’d have stopped. Not that I wouldn’t have stopped either. I just—”
I gulped my Gatorade to get myself to shut up.
“Relax! I’m just teasing. But did you really not know this was my family’s place? I mean the name, didn’t—”
I looked out the window at the sign I hadn’t noticed before.
“Wilson Choppers.”
I laughed at myself. “Oh! I’m so stupid. I didn’t even pay attention to the sign. I got a side stitch, and stopped. And you appeared out of nowhere with your Gatorade and your cute smile, and oh!”
I slapped my hand over my mouth.
This was not like me at all. Why was I behaving like this?
Vomiting up honesty like a chemo patient?
The truth was, Rafe arrived in my life at a critical time. And he gave me a new reason to stop lying.
I think that’s why my mom liked him so much.
But it wasn’t long before he gave me a whole new set of reasons to lie.
Still, it wasn’t his fault my mom died not believing me anymore.
That’s on me.
Chapter 15
Looking back, I’m surprised we could ever manage a full breath during the campaign.
Jude’s campaign was all work from Day One.
Kylie Rutter’s numbers continued to improve in those last few months before the Special Election. The compressed schedule of the Special Election was both a blessing and curse. I was glad to know there was an end date coming, but it was also nerve-wracking to have our entire lives twisted up in something that felt like a Talladega race track.
I was busy with work at the Foundation. Grant writing was a special talent of mine, since it required so much creativity and storytelling, and let’s face it—I am great at that. Mena handed over to me all the new proposals to draft for her review. It was a lot to balance during the campaign, but I loved the added responsibility and the way I was connected to the kids who came in and out of the Foundation. I felt like I was an integral part of the change Jude was always talking about in campaign speeches. I felt like we were part of the same team. And he was so earnest and honest, I felt like it was rubbing off on me a bit.
What? I did.
Nevertheless, there was no doubt that Jude was on the side of ethics and fair play. And as Huck and Finn said one night around the campaign table, ethics and fair play don’t win campaigns.
“I’m sorry, Jude, but there it is. You might have to get your hands dirty a little. You might have to let Laila dig up a little dirt on Kylie Rutter. You might have to smear her a little.”
Jude kept shaking his head and insisting, “No way. I’m not playing that game. We keep doing what we’re doing. We play fair. We let them burn out. Don’t believe the numbers. The people of Washington D.C. don’t want to be bought by Innovative Media. I hear it every time I go to a new school to talk.”
“Jude. School children can’t vote. Sad but true,” Laila piped in from the other end of the campaign table. I sat silently, because I actually agreed with Laila (and Huck and Finn) but I didn’t want to say any of that out loud. Better to be the supportive girlfriend and to let the others be the bearers of bad news.
We drove home from that particular meeting—Jude and I—in silence. The takeaway was that there was a real chance Jude was going to lose and I felt the tension in the subsequent late-night meetings. Innovative Media’s stream of money seemed endless. New billboards in support of Kylie Rutter were springing up on every mile marker of the beltway. Video spots that were trendy and yet professional were popping up on social media channels several times a day.
It was an endless struggle to keep up.
We all felt it.
Jude had his drive and commitment going for him. Kylie had the drive of an entire corporation going for her. I started to daydream about concession speeches and Plan Bs. I made plans for long trips on the boat on which we’d lick our wounds and regroup. I waited for Jude to catch up.
Instead he started doubling down on campaign meetings. I’d join him and Laila in the campaign office at the end of the day after I’d left my office at Appletr
eese, but gradually my presence felt like more and more of a formality.
I hadn’t yet asked Jude about the conversation I’d overheard in the conference room when Laila accused him of lying and of something else terrible that I couldn’t quite imagine. Part of me wanted to ask him about it. Part of me wanted to know the truth. And a final part of me wanted to know nothing at all.
Two months before the election, I caught Laila and Jude sitting on the same side of the table and I thought about all the times I wanted to sit on the same side as Jude at a restaurant. Rest our hands on each other’s knees. Smell his cologne while I was ordering a burger.
“Sit here,” I’d pat my side every time we sat down, but Jude would always shift away from me. To the other side.
“That’s weird. It’s awkward to sit on the same side of the table.”
How many times had he said that? But now he was sitting on the same side with Laila and they could have put their hands on each other’s knees and smelled each other’s cologne if they wanted to. They could have shared a burger from the same plate because they were so close. But they weren’t sitting at a restaurant, I reminded myself. There were no menus or burgers. They were sitting in a conference room in a warehouse—a makeshift political center. This is where everything happens, Jude was always reminding me.
He had said it while waving his arms around when I first came to see the space—the day we came to sign the lease agreement and pay the security deposit. This is where everything happens. I had believed him and I had been happy for him. I hadn’t realized what everything was.
I cleared my throat and Jude and Laila both looked up at me. Their expressions struck me. Not guilt. Or even anger. Hunger, I thought. They looked hungry. And I wondered if I should tell them to order a burger to share after all.
Why We Lie Page 11