Why We Lie

by Amy Impellizzeri

  Contorted and messy, I stood on my one clean foot at the sink, as I tried to reach the roll of paper towels situated just out of my unbalanced reach. I gasped with frustration at Kane standing paralyzed in his spot by the table, not moving, not helping.

  “Kane!”

  He continued not to move. Not to help. A tear rolled down his cheek, and for a minute I thought it was the onions until I realized I was the one who was supposed to be cutting up onions.

  “Kane?” I was gentler the second time. With effort.

  “Please, Chelsea. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Hop? Make a mess on your floor? I’m trying. I really am. Please, Kane, hand me a paper towel.” I balanced my hands on the sink’s edge with one coated foot still in mid-air.

  “Don’t clean it up, “ Kane said as he walked past me at the sink and bent down to the floor where the carton was still dumped on its side. He picked it up gingerly like it was fragile, and only then could I see what it was. It was yogurt. Strawberry. Nonfat.

  It was hers.

  I tried to push away the discovery that my foot was actually coated in what had to be at least six-month-old yogurt remnants as I finally reached the paper towel roll and began cleaning my foot, the sour smell filling the space between Kane and me.

  “Look. Kane, I’m not saying you need to clear the house of every last memory. But you need to throw away things like… this.” I pointed at the carton he was still handling oddly. I threw the paper towels, now sopping with my mother’s leftovers, into the sink. I held onto the edge of the sink and shook my head angrily at the stainless steel basin, and thought I’m tired of being alone.

  I’d stayed in the town my mother had died in, the one my former abusive boyfriend had lived in with his new girlfriend and baby on the way, before he’d beaten her senseless and ended up in jail. I’d stayed in the same waitressing job waiting on the same tables my mother had waited on all those nights before me. I’d stayed because everything was familiar and that’s what I thought I needed. After everything I’d been through, I thought I didn’t want to be surprised anymore.

  I stared at the sink a few feet from Kane, who was still crying over the near-empty yogurt carton, my purse thrown atop my mother’s usual chair at the kitchen table, with a journal poking out the top filled with stories and lies, and a buried pill bottle half full of useless medication, and I thought: It’s time to go. There’s nothing familiar about this anymore.

  I got into the car and headed south and I stopped when I ran out of gas.

  In Washington D.C.

  The land of liars, my mother had called it.

  It was where, ironically, I thought I could make a fresh start.

  And the funny thing is, other than the complete fiction I’d created to get the job at the Foundation, and up until Monica Landsberry crashed into my life, I felt like my lying was otherwise under control.

  I loved Jude, and that was the truth.

  I supported Jude’s political career and that was the truth.

  I was committed to my work at the Foundation and that was the truth.

  When I’d learned about Out The Bullies while researching them for my planned first date with Jude, I couldn’t help but become interested in a company trying to change things for so many. I applied to be a beta user that same day I had lunch with Jude at the Ethiopian restaurant, and I was approved.

  I wrote as SassyCorelle and ChelseaCat and a variety of other monikers. I wrote about bullies and I wrote about the truth.

  Words have power. I grew to understand that.

  I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d become the thing my mother had always wanted me to be.

  Cured.

  Chapter 24

  The final weeks before the election were filled with an onslaught of Out The Bullies ads in support of Jude Birch. I spent my downtime working up the nerve to tell Jude about Monica Landsberry.

  The thing was, Jude’s poll numbers were still abysmally low. Eleanor Norton abstained from an endorsement, stating only that she’d be honored to work with the new representative for the great District of Columbia. Jude was distracted and there never seemed a good time to fill him in on what had been going on behind the scenes.

  I wanted to tell him. But time was simply moving too fast.

  And it didn’t seem like any of it was going to matter anyway.

  We were losing.

  And then it was the day before the Special Election, and The Washington Truth told him everything.

  “What the hell is this, Aby?”

  Jude had arrived at the campaign office earlier than me to tape a new set of robo calls that was scheduled to go out to super voters at noon and 6 pm that day. When I got there, I was already one-and-a-half coffees in and I was still exhausted. I’d been up tossing and turning all night in the guest room trying to figure out how to tell Jude about my secret conversations with Monica, and trying to reconcile my feelings about being on the same side of the table as Laila in this whole duplicitous endeavor.

  I was also wondering what had happened to Monica, as she had disappeared in the last week. No phone calls, and when I tried the number I had for her, it went to a disconnected recording. I wasn’t sure, frankly, if the number had ever been in service as I’d never tried it before. Monica had given it to me one of the first times she called, but I never had to call it before. Monica’s phone calls had been regular and predictable over the last few weeks.

  Until they weren’t.

  With no contact with Monica and no whiff of the story in print, online, or even a blog post, I had started to lose faith that Monica was going to print anything at all. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It seemed a long shot that Jude could even turn around his numbers at that point, but there was still a part of me that believed Monica had been telling me the truth about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

  But with the media silence, I had no one to rely on to turn things around for Jude—other than Laila. I hated that fact.

  Meanwhile work at the Foundation had been plodding along. Mena had been tremendously kind to me, letting me leave early and understanding that I was torn in my attention between my work that I loved and the man that I loved. I wondered on more than one occasion whether it bothered her that her Executive Director’s fiancé was running against a candidate backed by her father. But from my point of view, Mena had left her political and financial allegiance to her father behind with disavowing his money. I was sure she loved her father as any good daughter does (how would I know, really?) but she didn’t seem to share or support his politics. She never went to campaign events for either candidate, and she never spoke publicly about either one, although I felt like she was probably going to vote for Jude. After all, she had offered her own money to the campaign.

  I’d been too embarrassed to return her check to her directly. I’d taken it to the bookkeeper who also handled Mena’s personal finances and told her to discreetly void the check, as I didn’t want to mix business with politics. She’d looked at me like I had three heads and said, “But this is D.C. Politics is everyone’s business.”

  I had nodded, and said, “Well, we want to do this on our own. Without Mena’s generous help. You know, the way Mena has inspired me with her own path.”

  And the bookkeeper had looked at me with the same three-headed look, but she’d shredded the check and then clicked a few buttons in her accounting software. And Mena never mentioned it.

  No, if Mena felt any conflict about her and my respective relationships to the adversarial candidates, she never let on.

  On the eve of the election, I was heading into the campaign office and I was in the middle of leaving a voicemail for my admin about a few letters I wanted her to print out and leave for my signature later in the day since I’d only have a few moments pre-election to pop by the office. So when Jude screamed out, “What the hell is this, Aby?” as a greeting, I shushed him, and kept on leaving the balance of my message.

  “Wh
at the hell was that?” I replied as Jude stood staring at me. I was aware tensions were going to be high on this day, but that didn’t mean I liked it. I noticed then the copies of The Washington Truth sitting on the table in front of him, and Laila looking like a barn cat who’d gotten her quota of barn mice already that morning.

  “What?” I grabbed a copy to read for myself.

  The Washington Truth, November 5, 2018

  Which Side of History Will You Be On?

  By Monica Landsberry

  By some reports, tomorrow’s Special Election, in which two District of Columbia insiders vie for a newly created non-voting representative position is a typical D.C. political struggle—one that no one outside the Beltway cares about, and less than half of those inside the Beltway intend to show up for.

  But our sources reveal a much different picture. One of corporate greed, power grabs, and grown up bullying playing out on a national stage.

  Jude Birch, an attorney who has focused his career on making sure companies cannot make money on the backs of innocent children and other underrepresented populations, has been outspent in every mile of this campaign by Kylie Rutter, the candidate notoriously backed by Innovative Media, the creator of the loathsome app, LessThan, as well as investor and construction mogul, Dominic Treese. The unmitigated support of Dominic Treese and Innovative Media has raised eyebrows about exactly what type of quid pro quo these mega-companies hope to gain with bought support in the Capitol.

  On the other side of the aisle, Jude Birch is supported by a small but mighty up and coming company, Out The Bullies, formed by a band of a techie whistleblowers who have stood up to Innovative Media, refusing several offers to be bought by the mega company.

  Jude Birch, previously employed by—and indeed mentored by Dominic Treese—has not let those early years influence his decisions to prosecute Innovative Media for COPPA violations. Sources say that Treese met with Birch personally at the outset of the U.S. Attorney’s case against the company he is heavily invested in, but like Out The Bullies, Jude Birch refused to be bought.

  So, D.C. Special Election voters, will YOU be bought this election?

  Which side of history will you be on?

  For more about the path of money from Treese to Innovative Media, turn to pages 4-5. For a profile of at least one suicide linked back to misguided use of IM’s popular app, LessThan, and the unfortunate connection between the victim and Kylie Rutter’s teenage daughter, turn to page 3.

  I knew without turning the page that Corelle’s smiling face would be beaming up on page 3, and I folded up the paper and turned it face down on the table.

  “Jude, this is a fabulous piece and the timing is impeccable,” Laila piped up from behind Jude.

  He turned to me instead of her. “Just who are their sources? Have you talked to them? Did you and Laila organize this?” His voice was softer but his eyes were still hard. He was angry at the deception, and he still believed I was the link to Out The Bullies.

  I sighed with the realization. Laila had sought out and seemingly locked in the Out The Bullies money. But because I’d started my whole relationship with Jude with a made-up story—based strictly on Google research—about a boyfriend who’d dismissed me and the whistleblowers who started Out The Bullies and Sarbanes Oxley, he still believed I was the missing link. My misguided lies were always messing up people’s ability to believe a word I said.

  The truth was, even though I’d been a beta user for years, using the Out The Bullies app strictly as therapy, I didn’t know any more about Out The Bullies than The Washington Truth had told me. But they’d made good on their promise to publish the exposé on the eve of the election. I couldn’t help but be proud of my part in all this. Jude might be mad now, but if he could do it, if he could actually pull this off, then he’d have no reason to be mad starting tomorrow.

  I inhaled deeply and said as much. “If I had it to do over, Jude, I wouldn’t change a thing. Now let’s get to work.”

  Probably given the timing and amount of work there was to do, he agreed. He turned back to Laila and with that my phone lit up with a strange 202 number. I headed out of the office to take the call, while Jude and Laila huddled heads down over a stack of paper. Laila glanced up at me as I was about to take my call, and gave me one of her trademark winks.

  “Did you see the piece, yet?”

  It was Monica calling from a brand new number.

  “I did. Thanks. It’s not exactly the full-fledged factual exposé you promised. More like a fluffy op ed piece. But it might do the trick. Thank you.”

  “Thank YOU. Ok, I know you have a ton to do. But listen. Assuming Jude can actually win—and I think he can, then you and I need to chat again tomorrow. I need something from you, and I think you’ll agree I’m due a returned favor if Jude wins this election.”

  “What are you talking about?” My heart sunk. When would I stop being beholden to Monica?

  “Well, it’s just that—you’re right. The piece today is not quite the full-on exposé about Innovative Media that I intended to publish. But the fuller piece isn’t ready yet. We need a better—more authoritative—source about a major piece of the story that we want to publish. But don’t worry about all that today. Just worry about winning. Talk soon.”

  Click.

  I went back to work, hoping Jude’s numbers would reverse and that he could actually win the election with this new Washington Truth piece, but worrying, based on Monica’s vague words, about just what a victory might cost.

  Chapter 25

  Spoiler alert: Jude won the election.

  Kylie Rutter gave her concession speech within minutes of the last poll closing. In one of those weird plot twists, the good guy won.

  The day after the results came in, Jude woke me early in the morning; he raised up on one elbow and asked me the question I’d been half hoping he would never ask.

  “Aby. How about we get married?”

  I looked at him long and hard, waiting for the fog to erase from my brain long enough to weigh all the decisions I would have to make before I could say yes or no. I wouldn’t be able to marry Jude unless I came clean about what I’d left behind. About who I was and what I’d done to get here. I knew that for sure.

  “Aby,” Jude said, and that sound alone reminded me of all the lies still between us.

  The silence stretched like an empty hammock between us.

  “Mrs. Birch, I have a delivery. Can you sign for it?”

  I turned to face the delivery man standing in Jude’s new Capitol Hill office. It was a few weeks after the election, and we were still moving in. An engraved clock that I’d ordered as a surprise had now arrived. And I was being asked to sign for it.

  “Sure.”

  I hadn’t planned on marrying Jude with the biggest lies still standing between us. But I hadn’t planned a lot of the landmarks along this journey, either.

  We got married the week before the clock arrived. A female minister came in to check on Jude on one of her rotations through the building for a non-denominational prayer service, and Jude asked her to marry us.

  “We’re already engaged,” he said.

  I looked quizzically at Jude. I had never even said yes. How could he call us engaged?

  But I wanted to marry him. He knew that.

  “Can’t you do the honors?” He was persistent.

  “Jude, she can’t marry us. There’s paperwork, and witnesses and things to actually take care of.”

  The filling out of a marriage license was a big holdup for me. I assumed I’d have time to come clean before Jude and I actually had to sign both our names on a legal document, but the minister seemed a little militant about her authority.

  “I most certainly can marry you.”

  She answered my confused expression with, “Marriage is a covenant between you and God. Not you and the state. So if you want to declare your love and have me sanction it—go for it. And let me be the witness and facilitator.”

/>   So we got married. Right there in Jude’s new office. I have no idea if it was legal or not. Like most of what I was up to at that point. But—also like most of what I was up to at that point—it just felt right.

  We announced our wedding as if it had been an official one before God and everyone. The press gave us a little—just a little—bit of time to ourselves, and we holed up on Front Runner for a long weekend. After a campaign that had pulled Jude in a million different directions, we weren’t used to spending every waking moment together. I realized that simple fact, as I swallowed my pill the morning after the “wedding” with some left over tonic water on the nightstand, and noticed Jude looking at me curiously.

  “Oh no. Don’t get any ideas about getting me barefoot and pregnant any time soon.”

  “You’d be a fabulous mother, Aby.”

  Jude tilted his head at me to show he was serious and not simply trying to get me back into bed.

  “Well, that’s a conversation for another day.” I smiled at him lifted my water glass to him. “Cheers.”

  “To later.” Jude toasted me with an air glass, and I smiled to hide my fears.

  With my history, I don’t really think I’m cut out to be anyone’s mom.

  Mothers show up late at night with power bars and false confidence in their daughters’ ability to make deadlines. They tell their only children they can be anything they want. They tell their daughters they can be something good and beautiful and amazing. They tell their daughters they can move on.

  In other words, in my experience, all mothers do is LIE.

  And then the realization: Well actually, maybe, I’d be a good one after all.

  Having taken a backseat throughout the campaign, the marriage announcement pushed me into the spotlight as I always feared it might.

  The press tried to dig up a little information on me, but came up only with my Foundation work, and luckily for me, bigger issues made them lazy, and they focused on my role at the Foundation.