Why We Lie

by Amy Impellizzeri

There was one article by The Washington Truth published on the eve of the swearing in that got under my skin a little, asking whether Jude and I would go the way of other young and hungry political couples of late. I wondered if Monica had anything to do with that piece. She hadn’t called immediately following Jude’s victory as she’d threatened. I started to think maybe she and I really were done with each other. I breathed a sigh of relief. I told myself if the worst the press had was that Jude and I might become another cliché, then that wasn’t so bad.

  I guess if they had had much more time to dig, I’d have been in trouble.

  But of course, they didn’t have much more time. Because soon afterward, Jude was shot.

  Chapter 26

  The honeymoon ended a few days after the swearing in.

  I showed up to the campaign office to help clear it out before we gave up our short-term lease.

  I expected the office to be empty and locked, so I was surprised to find the door open and even ajar. I pushed it open gingerly and waited as my eyes adjusted to make out the figures who were standing in the office. It was Jude. And he was holding Laila in the dark.

  I switched the lights on to reveal them completely. Jude’s arms were pressed around her and Laila had tears running down her face. Mascara-streaked tears were running down a face I was so used to seeing locked down in ironclad expressionless icy strength. Its seeming evaporation was a sight almost more startling than catching my husband with his arms around her.

  I gasped. At her tears, really.

  Laila quickly excused herself, hissing as she left the room. “This isn’t at all what you think it is. So be very careful.”

  Be very careful? This woman was almost more than I could bear.

  The second she was out of the room, I screamed at him, “Jesus, Jude. Have you really become a cliché?”

  He stood silent and sad.

  “Are we what The Washington Truth has predicted? Just another political couple who can’t be honest for one second. Who won’t last much longer than the campaign itself?”

  “Aby, stop. You know I love you and you’re jumping to conclusions here. This is me. And Laila.”

  “Exactly. You’re not helping your cause, Jude.”

  He sat down at the table, groaned loudly, and put his head in his hands. It occurred to me that something was bothering him and that it wasn’t me walking in on him holding Laila. It occurred to me that a good wife might actually ask what was wrong.

  It also occurred to me that I was not technically his wife.

  Or good.

  “Be honest with me for one second, Jude. Is our entire life together one big lie?”

  Yes. I answered silently, truthfully, for him, while waiting for his answer.

  Because his answer would be everything. It could be the turning point.

  “No!” Jude yelled, and then jumped up from his seat at the table and grabbed at my arms. His grip felt too tight, unfamiliar. Everything about him felt unfamiliar. He even smelled unfamiliar. He was coated with Laila’s almond scent. I turned away from him to keep from gagging.

  “We are not a lie, Aby. We are not a lie.” I wrenched away from his grasp. His tight hold was making my heart race and panic spread up my back.

  “How can I tell? How can I trust you?” I was sobbing now. The kind of loud choking sobs that made me feel out of control.

  “You have to. You have to know that by now, Aby. Or this is all for nothing.”

  “Jude, I don’t want her in our lives any more. I don’t want to see her—with you or without you ever again. Promise me. Promise me.”

  Jude looked down at his shoes in response and I left him behind, swirling in the stink of almond and betrayal. I walked down the hall to a bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I looked into the mirror at my pores as they opened to soak in the cold water, and I splashed again and again, while my pores opened wider and wider and my makeup ran down my face making longer and longer streaks at first and then smaller and smaller ones, until the streaks faded and nothing was left but my face—clean and clear.

  I stared at myself in the mirror a moment. I took in all the doubt and emotion and clarity. It was the face I was not used to showing in public. And I smiled triumphantly at my reflection, certain in that moment that I was the only person in my entire life I could trust. I was the only person I could count on being honest and authentic.

  “You can trust no one but yourself,” I whispered to my reflection. “Stop believing otherwise.”

  “You are the one authentic and true person in your own life,” I repeated, searching for more affirmations in my memory, flipping through recalled images like an old-fashioned projector until I gasped aloud.

  Because of course, even that. Even what I was telling myself right that moment…about my authenticity and reliability.

  It was all one. Big. Lie.

  As I walked out of the bathroom and exited the campaign office, leaving Jude and Laila to clean things up, my cell phone lit up with a brand new 202 number.

  Monica was back.

  Chapter 27

  “Aby, you have to help me talk to Jude.”

  “What are you talking about? We’re done. I helped you get your story. I helped you get your information on Innovative Media, and I helped you give credibility to Out The Bullies. We’re even.”

  “Even? Come on, Aby. Even you can’t be that naïve.”

  The words stung. I knew I was a lot of things. But naïve? That didn’t feel good. Especially with what I’d just walked in on in the conference room.

  “Monica, Jude is the real deal. You printed it yourself. And while you might not believe it, I do. If he wants to talk to you, he will. Call his office. Make an appointment. Do this through the normal channels. If he decides not to talk to you, there’s really nothing I can do.”

  “So you’re fine with Jude knowing about your past.”

  I signed with exasperation. Is this all she had?

  “Yes, Monica. I am fine with that. He and I are going to sit down and have a long talk, and what happens between Jude and me personally has nothing to do with you, and frankly, I couldn’t care less about your threats anymore.”

  “Fair enough. But let me give you a bit of advice, Aby. This next installment of the Innovative Media exposé? Without Jude’s side of the story, it might be a little one-sided. And if that’s the case, I can’t promise it’s going to paint Jude in the most flattering light. Think about that before you lose my number entirely.”

  Click.

  Thud.

  The next few days were numbing. I banished Jude to the guest room, telling him we’d talk when I had the strength. The truth was I couldn’t demand the truth from Jude until I was ready to come clean. And despite my blustering with Monica, I wasn’t there yet. Night after night, I’d write in the Out The Bullies blog under various aliases, or in my bright orange journal which was running out of pages, and I started to wonder whether I’d ever find the courage to tell the whole truth to Jude, or whether our relationship—our new “marriage”—would simply be over before it began.

  I was thinking these dark thoughts one night while driving home from a donor event for the Foundation, when red and blue lights pulled up closely behind me. I didn’t remember speeding, but given that I didn’t remember much about the drive, I realized I better pull over.

  “Sir, I’m tired and I’m in a hurry to just get home.”

  These were the first words I spoke to the officer who pulled me over on Michigan Avenue on my way home that night. It was a total face-palm moment.

  I should have paid more attention to my words. I should have chosen more carefully and stopped to reflect more. But I was too busy staring at him. And the more I stared, the more worried I got.

  Not because I’d likely been going over the speed limit.

  Not because of the two glasses of rosé I’d had at the event that evening.

  Not even because I’d spilled a little stale leftover wine on my dress whi
le helping clean up after the event, and could only imagine the scent that was emanating through the small crack I allowed in the driver-side window. I figured that through even that small crack, I was starting to smell like a homeless woman from outside the Metro.

  No, I was worried because the police officer wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was wearing regular old clothes. Well, not regular clothes. He was wearing a tailored black shirt that looked a little expensive for the highway patrol and some matching tailored chinos. He was tanned and clean shaven and looked way too comfortable to be meeting monthly traffic stop quotas. So, even though he held a badge up to my window, identifying himself as a member of the U.S. Capitol Police, I figured this was some sort of scam that I’d fallen for and soon I’d be stuffed into my own trunk and dumped in the River.

  I kept the window opened only a crack. “I’m sorry, Officer. You don’t look like a D.C. cop, and I’ve seen enough horror movies to know I’m damned if I drive away right now, and possibly dead if I stay put right now.”

  I was questioning whether I should phone Jude. But my phone was across the car sandwiched in the fold of the passenger side seat, and I was afraid if I reached for it, the man posing as a police officer might shoot me on sight.

  “Can I reach over for my phone?” I asked him through the crack in the window as I nodded in the direction of the passenger seat.

  He shook his head, and spoke loudly through the cracked window.

  “Ma’am. You’re right to be questioning who I am. But I’d suggest you don’t call your husband right now.” I wondered how he knew I was sort of married. And how he knew I was about to call him.

  “Hold on.” The plain clothes officer motioned to someone in the car, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I watched Mena walk from the passenger seat of the patrol car around to my side of the car.

  “What the—”

  “Shhh. Aby, it’s ok,” Mena greeted me. “Put the window down. Officer Bruce needs to talk to you, and frankly, we haven’t been able to arrange a quiet time with you outside the office when you haven’t been with Jude. Sorry, but this was the only way.”

  “What the hell? You’ve been waiting for me? What’s going on here?”

  “Come with us, Aby. Back to the Capitol Police office, and we’ll explain everything.” I noticed that Mena was doing all the talking now, and Officer Bruce was standing silently next to her. Waiting. That Mena was there was reassuring at first, but that hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling was not nearly as reassuring, and I was undeniably happy about the idea of getting the hell out of there. To a real police station. But how would I know where we were headed?

  “For obvious reasons, I’m not that interested in following you blindly. Where are we headed?”

  “Aby, this is a Capitol Police matter. We’re headed to the Capitol. No place safer than that, right?”

  Mena leaned in, and I saw one of her long manicured fingers tapping at the crack in my window.

  I could leave both of them here and drive home, and call the police, couldn’t I?

  But if he really was a police officer, then what might that get me? Arrested? For evading arrest?

  But what was I doing that was illegal?

  Oh, right. Speeding, and driving under the influence. I mean I was feeling pretty sober by that point, but what would a breathalyzer say? And how would it look to Jude if one of the first official duties was to consider a pardon request from his new wife?

  I had no choice really. “Ok. I’ll follow you two.”

  Mena walked around to the passenger side and tapped on the window. She was saying something I couldn’t quite make out. There was no light on that side, and I couldn’t see her lips in the darkness.

  “I can’t hear you,” I yelled through the still closed window while Officer Bruce started walking back to his patrol car.

  She must have yelled louder, because I finally heard Mena through the closed passenger window. “Let me in, Aby. I’m driving with you to the Capitol.”

  At the Capitol, we drove around to an annex of the parking lot I’d never been to in my weeks of moving Jude into his office. I stayed behind Officer Bruce, and Mena barked a few directions, but other than that, she remained silent.

  “Mena, what’s going on here? Am I in trouble? Is the Foundation in trouble?”

  Mena kept barking directions, and pointed ahead for me to follow Officer Bruce around several dips and curves in the Capitol parking lot.

  I kept peppering her with questions as I turned the car around the parking lot, but she ignored me other than to say, “Aby. Shush. Officer Bruce will explain when we get to the office. I don’t want to give you half the story. You’ll get the full story in a few moments.”

  “You don’t want to give me half the story?” I laughed then. “You’re working with the police, and stalking me to get me away from my newly elected husband to have me talk to Capitol Police. I’d say, all I’ve been getting is half the story up to this point.”

  After I parked next to Officer Bruce, the three of us headed to the nearest entrance—one I’d never been through in my weeks of near daily trips helping Jude moving into the Capitol building office since the election. We walked in through a nondescript door via an electronic pass that Officer Bruce pulled out of his pocket. He used the pass again to gain access to an elevator just inside the doorway. After the three of us stepped inside the elevator, Officer Bruce reached across me with his still unwrinkled black shirt and pressed 2. I laughed a little bit, breaking the eerie silence that had covered us since we all emerged from our cars parked side by side in the Capitol parking lot.

  Mena responded to my inappropriate nervous laughter instead of Officer Bruce, who kept his game face on. “What’s so funny?”

  “I always thought these sorts of secret clandestine interviews happened in the basement. Not on the second floor.”

  Mena looked over at Officer Bruce, and I swore she stifled a laugh, but also she rolled her eyes, as she said, “Oh, Aby. Quit being so dramatic.”

  The room they led me to was much busier than I expected. As we made our way to the second floor, I was picturing a “Law and Order” room with a long wooden pockmarked table and cinderblock walls and a handsome good cop to go with Officer Bruce’s bad cop routine. But instead I got a long hallway past some speckled glass with a fuzzy view of rows of screens on the other side, which were being monitored by a room full of men, and only one woman that I could make out as we walked by briskly.

  “What’s in there?” I pointed as we walked by, but Mena and Officer Bruce shrugged and kept walking. Eventually I was lagging and I sped up to keep up with them, not wanting to be alone here any more than I wanted to be alone on the side of the road not a half hour earlier.

  We landed in a small but comfortably decorated office at the end of the hallway and past the speckled glass. I glanced around for a nameplate, but there wasn’t one. I wondered how I’d get any reassurance that I was really talking to a man named Officer Bruce. Hypocritical of me, I know.

  Officer Bruce took a seat in the institutional metal chair behind the desk in the office, and Mena took a seat in a bright yellow pleather seat on the opposite side of the desk and motioned for me to take the one next to her.

  “So, Ms. Boyle.”

  “Mrs. Birch, please.”

  I thought I saw the faintest sign of his eyebrow going up. But just on one side. What does he know? I wondered, before he complied.

  “Of course. Mrs. Birch. Can I call you Aby? Would you mind that?”

  I nodded. “That’s fine.” Why bother getting hung up on legalities simply because I was speaking to a police officer?

  He paused a beat, and I stifled my compulsion to fill the silence with something. I looked over at Mena, who was looking directly at him, showing me only her regal profile, and I thought back to my initial interview with her. Was everything finally catching up to me? The interview, the false resumé? The conversations with Monica? How much did they a
ll know? Only one thing was for sure—I’d need to be very careful here.

  I waited out the beat with Officer Bruce.

  “Aby, the important thing to understand is that we are all on the same side here.”

  I nodded, without any clue why.

  “This will become abundantly clear as we are able to disclose more down the road, but for now, here’s what we can tell you. As a newly elected Congressman, Mr. Birch’s safety is our jurisdiction. It’s paramount to us.”

  I nodded again, still without a clue why.

  “Thank you, I—that’s wonderful. But this was sort of a dramatic way to introduce your services to me, no? Thank you so much for your commitment to our safety.”

  Officer Bruce shook his head. “Here’s the thing, Aby. I don’t want to be crass, but your safety—it’s not within our jurisdiction. Only Mr. Birch’s.”

  “Ah. Ok. Got it. Well, then thanks for nothing.” I smiled and winked, in Laila Rogers fashion, seeing if it worked to loosen up the good Officer. It didn’t. He continued on, remaining expressionless.

  “Aby, we receive hundreds of threats on elected representatives every year. We have to follow up on all of them. That makes our job quite difficult, as you can imagine.”

  I nodded. “I can.”

  Then an understanding started to creep into my consciousness. “Have you—” I put my hand up to my throat. “Have you received a threat against Jude?”

  Officer Bruce nodded. “We have. A fairly significant and substantiated threat.”

  “Is it someone from Out The Bullies?” I blurted out. I thought I saw a flint of surprise pass over Officer Bruce’s face before it burned out and left the expressionless gaze again. “I can’t give you the exact details, but suffice to say, there seems to be some connection between a failed campaign run by Mr. Dominic Treese some years ago, and the successful run of your husband last year, and that connection involves a substantial threat.”

  I looked at Mena. So this was why she was here? Her dad was involved, too? Was he being threatened too? But he wasn’t a Congressional representative. From what I’d heard, his campaign was over before it started. How did Mena get him this level of security?