The librarian’s eyes bulged. “You did this. You did this to this girl.”
I nodded violently as I pointed to my leg. “Yes. He did. He did this to me.”
As the librarian rubbed my back, and phoned for both security and the Vice Principal of Discipline, Rafe stood dumbfounded. I felt relief. The kind of relief one feels when one is finally heard and believed. For me, it was the kind of relief I’d been waiting on for way too long. And the confusing realization that it took one more lie to be believed was heady.
As the Vice Principal escorted Rafe out of the library and away from me—finally—with his mouth still wide open, I thought:
My mother and all my therapists were wrong.
Lying isn’t wrong.
Lying can save me.
But telling everyone that Rafe hurt me with the protractor that day? When he really didn’t?
That isn’t the lie I’m most ashamed of.
The Washington Truth, dated October 8, 2018
Excerpt from the Op Ed piece, by Nate Essuzare
…Is it possible, just possible, that we all want too much for our children?
We seem to be disproportionately excited and anxious about our children’s success in this country. This is a country of parents who claim to want only the best for their children, and yet, too many are clogging their children with ambitions that can only lead to failure.
Or worse, success.
I say this is because we have come to define success as more.
More things. More work. More money. More responsibilities. More cares. More. This is a unique problem in this country—an epidemic of more. In so many countries around the world, parents and families struggle to give their children enough.
We look at those countries and pity and patronize.
Maybe we should be learning instead.
Maybe we should stop giving our children more. And give them enough instead.
And maybe we could admit then that this success we have sold them on all their lives, was really, just one. Big. Lie.
Chapter 23
“Look at them.” My mom was pointing to the television screen during her treatment. A circus was playing out on the screen in the form of the evening news. “Look at all those politicians. Everyone promising to help the kids and no one really doing so. Washington D.C. is the land of liars, you know?”
I’d nodded.
I knew a thing or two about liars. Maybe they had their reasons. I felt myself warming to politicians as I sat there with my mother. But still I sat silently.
I sat with my mother in silence a lot while the chemo was strapped to her arm for the long hours it took for the doctors to poison her.
“It’s for her own good,” they’d say.
The ultimate lie.
They had saved her the first time, but within five years after high school graduation, the cancer came back. My mom and I had been working side by side at the local diner, me serving up coffee, her serving up dreams and aspirations to the local kids.
And so in many ways, the years had gone by very, very slowly. From what I’d heard, Rafe had gone off to school on the lacrosse scholarship as planned, but lost it sophomore year as his GPA tanked and his drink of choice changed from orange Gatorade to grain alcohol. His parents tried to intervene, but apparently helicoptering is frowned upon for young adults in college.
The library incident had not resulted in any negative ramifications for Rafe. He’d told everyone I was a liar. And it was pretty easy to figure out that the blood was all over me and not anywhere near Rafe. I hurt my own leg, and blamed it on Rafe. I was a liar. Rafe wasn’t. Case closed.
In the meeting with the Vice Principal and my mother, I tried to say, “But he’s been hurting me. I snapped. He did do this to me in a way.” The Vice Principal clucked his tongue and said, “These are serious accusations, young lady. I think it’s time you tell the truth.” Then he told my mother to keep a better eye on me and find out exactly how I’d been spending my nights. Rafe sat in the corner with his own doting parents, like a kid in a candy shop. I knew he’d told them my made up story of working at Divas. Not even he could believe that story at that point. But it was yet another strike against me.
I asked my mother if she at least believed me that Rafe hadn’t been the Prince Charming she’d always thought? She sent me back to Dr. York. So I figured that was her answer.
And I couldn’t blame her. Because I was—at my core—a liar.
I’d cut my own leg and tried to blame it on Rafe at my breaking point, and that meant that no one believed me about anything else either.
Sometimes, while Rafe was away at college, I started to get confused and believe that I was wrong about him. That I’d been the problem, and he’d been a perfect gentleman. But then he came home from college, and started helping out around the motorcycle shop again. I’d see him at the diner occasionally, and the way my heart would race uncomfortably when he’d come in and smirk or wink at me helped me remember that I didn’t trust him. That I was right about him.
The diner was a breeding ground for gossip, and before I discovered The Washington Truth, it was the diner where I got all my news. I heard Rafe wasn’t headed to law school or anywhere else, actually. His grades hadn’t landed him too many opportunities beyond one year of collegiate lacrosse. I guess he couldn’t find a girl as dumb as me to do his history papers any more. I also heard he was dating Demi Poole from high school, and I’d seen them around town together occasionally.
I had a lot of first dates, and not too many second dates. It was a small town, and after people connected the dots that I was the one who lied about Rafe Wilson hurting her, I was usually pretty untouchable. I knew I’d have to leave town eventually. But I tried not to think about the catalyst that would have to happen before I’d be free to leave. I knew I’d never leave town while my mom was still alive
During the final round of my mom’s chemo, with her hair, eyebrows and most muscle mass gone, I’d take turns with Kane, sitting in the bathroom with my mom while she vomited violently for hours on end until it seemed there was little left of her body but fight and spit.
I’d distract her with tall tales of a different life. Tales of a girl who moved away and started adopting thousands of children in the inner city and who was a celebrated hero.
Be that girl. When I’m gone, don’t stay here. Don’t stay here. My mom would elicit promises from me from her bed, and I’d whisper through my tears, “Of course not. What could be left for me here when you’re gone?”
Saying the words out loud made me feel as though my very ribs were breaking open and my insides were flowing out onto the bed beside my mom.
Sometimes I’d read to her and sometimes we’d talk and sometimes we’d sit quietly. The quiet hurt me. I’d find my mind traveling to Rafe.
I was so jealous thinking of him with Demi, and yet so torn because I knew it would only be a matter of time before he turned on her, too. I thought about warning her—about knocking on her door and telling her to get in her car and run away. Run as far as she could.
But I didn’t. I sat with my mom, day after day and pined for him a little.
Demi wouldn’t believe me anyway, I told myself. No one does.
“Rafe Wilson is a lying, cheating asshole.” I said it aloud, but not to anyone, as my mom was in and out of consciousness those days. I rambled on and on about him. About all the times he hit me. All the times he called me a pig when I’d order food out in public. All the times he called me stupid and a loser when I couldn’t find time to finish his homework for him. I fingered the gash on my thigh that was now a scar. “I should have had him arrested a thousand times over. I should never have let it get so out of hand,” I said.
I thought I was talking to the empty air around me while my mom slept. But my words made her perk up. She seemed really agitated, and I was afraid that somehow she actually heard and understood my words. Years of hiding the abuse from her was unraveling on her deathbed.
I felt guilty. But it only lasted a moment, as she leaned up on her elbow, reached over and touched my thigh, and said “Chelsea. You have to move on. You hurt yourself, honey. Rafe didn’t do this to you. You picked Rafe. I know, I know. The heart wants what the heart wants. But now you have to move on. Just move on.”
She laid back deep in the covers and brought the duvet up to her chest with thin pale fingers. I always imagined that if I ever got the nerve to tell my mother exactly what Rafe had done to me, she’d become enraged and make all sorts of violent threats, only some of which would she actually carry through on. I was certain she’d be appropriately indignant on my behalf.
As she laid back in a morphine haze, I was furious at her actual reaction.
I was even more furious when she died the next day and those became her final words to me.
Madelyn Boyle died in her sleep.
At first I thought Kane was saying that to make me feel better. After my mother was admitted to hospice care, and after around-the-clock vigils, I had taken an hour to go home and get a shower. I’d fallen asleep by accident. Kane called from the hospital to deliver the news. I thought he’d been trying to spare me some gory details about how my mother choked on her own tongue in a seizure, or bled out in the hospital bed, or some such other gruesome fate.
But when I arrived at the hospital 15 minutes after that call and saw my mother laid out looking like she’d stilled for an afternoon nap, I knew Kane was telling the truth.
My mother had simply stopped breathing. A heart could stop beating. Lungs could stop breathing. A person could stop living. The morphine was being delivered in slow steady doses to eliminate pain from the whole sordid mess. Madelyn Boyle had fought the cancer for years, and yet, if her body was done, then there was probably no talking her out of going ahead and dying.
The funeral arrangements were perfunctory and planned and I was not at all surprised by how carefully everything had been pre-arranged. The town turned out in droves to honor her.
I saw a few familiar faces from high school at the church. But not Rafe. I looked for him, though. I hated myself for that, but I did.
I didn’t thank those high school faces who did come. I didn’t say anything to them all. It had been years since graduation. And other than the occasional drop ins at the diner, I hadn’t seen any of them since then. I’d been preoccupied with my mom’s living. And dying.
The diner was shut down to the public for a private post-funeral reception. The owners loved my mom. I knew they tolerated me in her honor and I was grateful for that. A shrill-sounding girl named Sandy Richards came to the diner after the funeral and hugged me before I could stop her. She had been part of Demi’s Posse, but I had only the vaguest of memories of her. I wasn’t sure at all why Sandy had come, other than to gawk at the floral arrangements and report back to the others whether I was still a lying, crazy loser.
During the awkward silence that followed Sandy giving empty condolences and me giving even more empty thanks, I was scrolling through my memories of Sandy. Most of them were benign. Just episodes of Sandy ignoring me in the halls, or in class.
There was something, however, at the corner of my memory, trying to resurface. I looked at Sandy, measuring her.
“Hey Chelsea, did you know? It’s actually our reunion weekend—five whole years. I’m heading over to Carmine’s Pizza shop to meet up with the others. Want to meet us there?”
I shook my head perhaps a bit too quickly. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”
“You should come. Demi and Rafe and a bunch of people from the old crowd will be there.”
I paused for a moment. Maybe I would go. Maybe I’d warn Demi about Rafe. Maybe I’d tell the truth and maybe someone would finally believe me. Maybe I’d be a hero. “I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
I nodded slowly, thinking.
“Ok. I’m really sorry about your mom. You want anything? A cigarette or anything?”
And then I remembered.
I was in the girls’ bathroom—in the last stall—in the final weeks of our senior year when Sandy and Demi came in. It was the day before the library incident. I recognized their squealing giggles. Sandy didn’t seem to have outgrown the squeal yet if her greeting of me at the funeral was any indication.
“You want a cigarette?” I’d heard Sandy ask Demi, her voice thin and high.
“No. You know I don’t touch those things.” Demi’s voice was thicker and lower and definitely recognizable.
I stayed still. I didn’t want to show myself. I wasn’t sure if they were putting on a show because they already knew someone was in there. Maybe they knew I was in there. But I decided not to take the risk anyway.
“Hoping to have fresh breath for Rafe after school? Don’t worry, I have gum.” Sandy’s giggle reverberated off the cinderblock walls and hurt my ears physically.
“Shut up,” Demi said.
“Demi, come on. It’s time you guys come out in the open and stop creeping around behind that girl’s back. I mean, God, her mom is like dying or something. Can’t you do Rafe’s homework for him, and let him leave that poor girl alone, already?”
At my mom’s funeral, I glared at Sandy with the memory now as fresh in my brain as if it had happened yesterday. I fingered the scar in my thigh through my pants, and Sandy looked down at my hand as it caressed my thigh.
“Hey, Chelsea.” The squeal was gone and her voice was softer now. “I’ve been wondering something. You know, now that I see how Rafe is with Demi. They’ve moved in together.”
“Give them my congratulations,” I said wryly.
“Chelsea. Rafe wasn’t that, you know, nice to you back then, was he?”
I decided to let the chips fall where they may.
If Demi wanted to lie to herself about Rafe, who was I to judge?
“Rafe? Nah. He was fine. We were just kids, you know? It was no big deal. I wouldn’t worry about him and Demi.”
That was it.
It was no big deal.
That’s the one.
That’s the lie I’m most ashamed of.
A few days after my mother’s funeral, I was sitting up all night crying, so the wailing police sirens didn’t wake me up. I wondered briefly where they were headed, and why there were so many. It was a small town, with not a lot of crime, so the sheer number of police cars all headed in the same direction was newsworthy on its own.
The next day I got the news at the diner.
Rafe had beat up Demi after a fight. The details of the fight varied depending on the gender and the age of the source, but suffice to say, I figured out that he’d left her for dead in their bedroom, bleeding and naked. He had made it look like someone had broken in, breaking all the windows to the house from the outside. Then he’d left, and had some beers at the bar in town, trying to make an alibi for himself.
Demi had pulled herself across the floor of her bedroom, and dragged herself down the stairs and out the front door where she’d mustered the strength to scream for help.
The neighbors had been annoyed at first at the racket, but then they’d saved her life.
Demi ultimately pressed charges and Rafe had pled guilty without a trial. It all happened pretty quickly and he got five years as a result of the quick and speedy plea bargain.
Only five years for all her bravery.
I was tempted to gloat every time I saw Demi after that.
See. It doesn’t even pay to tell the truth. The bad guy always wins anyway.
But I couldn’t gloat, because I knew what had happened to Demi was my fault. I hadn’t warned Demi about Rafe. And worse than that, I had lied about him, and so no one believed he was capable of doing such a thing.
Months after the attack, I couldn’t bear to see Demi in town. One of her eyes still looked off to the side as she’d been nearly blinded by the beating. I avoided her every time I saw her, and I knew it was only a matter of time before something convinced me to finally leave.
> I didn’t know it would be moldy food, but that turned out to be as good a reason as any. w
I was over at Kane’s for a weekly check-in dinner. He’d started these immediately after my mom died. He planned the first one at her funeral. “Don’t disappear. Come Tuesday for dinner. And every Tuesday after that.”
I’d moved out shortly after high school graduation. The tension between my mom and I after I’d hurt myself in the library had grown uncomfortable and I needed my own space. The space and the tension had dissipated as my mom relapsed.
I didn’t like coming home—but I’d done it often after my mom’s relapse, and I complied with Kane’s dinner-date command after the funeral. As expected, the dinners were usually filled with awkward silences, punctuated with the occasional:
“Are you going to the new therapist?”
Yes. Every Monday now.
“Are you taking your meds?”
Sometimes.
“Do you need any money?”
No.
We both became increasingly and painfully aware how much a part of our lives my mother was. We could barely carry on a conversation without her help.
One night, I arrived to find Kane making something that looked a little more complicated than his usual toaster muffin pizzas. I was touched by his effort. “Can I help, Kane?”
“Sure, how about you cut up an onion or two?” Kane gestured carelessly toward the refrigerator with a paring knife.
I was embarrassed by my instinctual but exaggerated wince at the waving knife in Kane’s shaky hands. I ducked my head into the refrigerator where I spotted a few onions settled behind the milk. Reaching deep into the back of the refrigerator, I accidentally backhanded a small carton which rolled forward through a narrow empty alley of the shelf, careening off the edge. It landed on the floor, spilling its contents all over the kitchen floor and onto one of my bare feet.
“Oh my God! Kane, what is this? It’s disgusting!” I tried not to gag as I hopped over to the sink with a thick pile of curdled moldy goo winding its way around my right foot and between each and every toe.
Why We Lie Page 18