This Is All a Lie

by Thomas Trofimuk

  “Don’t you believe in angels, Ray?”

  Ray’s not sure how to answer. The woman in the elevator who wasn’t there once they arrived at the main floor – the woman who knew his name, who knew he was having an affair – she shook something in him. Was she an angel? If that hard-edged, no-bullshit woman was his guardian angel then he was in worse shape than he imagined.

  “No. I do not believe in angels.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Belief in something isn’t by degrees,” he says. “It’s either yes, you believe in a thing, or no, you don’t believe in that thing.”

  “What if you have doubts about your belief, or you are open to the idea of a new belief?

  “Then you believe in a thing, and you have doubts. Or you don’t believe, yet.”

  “I think you’re being too simplistic, Ray.”

  Nancy looks at Death. He looks like George Clooney and he is frowning and shaking his head. He lights another cigarette.

  “If you are really seeing things we should get you to a hospital. If you’re actually having a break from reality then it’s serious.”

  “Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you? You’d like to see me strapped down, wouldn’t you? Helpless and sedated? Does that turn you on, Ray? That way you could walk away and not feel anything. Death says no, by the way. No hospitals. Death thinks I’m perfectly fine.”

  Ray can hear Nancy speaking Russian. It’s muffled as if she is holding her hand over the phone’s receiver. She speaks, and then waits. Then she speaks some more.

  “Death says he likes me, Ray. Do you like me? Did you ever like me?”

  “Can you be serious for a second? Just stop it. Stop playing around.”

  “Do you like me?”

  “Of course I like you. I really think it would be a good idea for you to lie down…”

  “…and I think I’m fine here with Death, and right now, I win. Besides, going to bed would remind me of you, and that would make me sad. The smell of you is in my bed, Ray. That’s so depressing.” She raises her glass to Death and he nods toward her as if he approves.

  Nancy is confused. “What are you nodding about? What?”

  Ray looks out the window and up the building. “Who are you really talking with?” He considers the possibility she has another phone and she is having a conversation with someone else. The thought crosses his mind that she’s called her brother and a car full of Russian mafia is going to pull up beside him, pull out their guns, and that will be it.

  “I told you. Death is here and he’s nodding about something I’ve said, or done. For all I know it could be something I’m thinking.”

  “Death reads your mind?”

  “Of course he does, darling. Don’t you know anything?”

  “You’re drunk, Nancy.”

  “Yes. I am, a bit, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be nice to Death. You should always remember your manners. Now, tell me why you like me.”

  “What?”

  “You said you liked me before. Tell me why.”

  He sighs. “I could tell you you’re beautiful but I think you already know that. I don’t want to tell you what you already know. The most important thing was it seemed like you really wanted to be there with me. Every time.”

  Silence. As if she is considering his answer. And then, “Of course, I wanted to be there, Ray. Is that your wife? Does your wife not want to be there anymore? Is that it? So now what will you have?”

  Ray thinks about this and decides he has a friend who used to be a lover. And he has two amazing daughters. His life is full of love, and sensation. It amuses him that he thinks about Madame Chernakov in this moment – he can see her making coffee and it pleases him that she is in his life. Even though he pays her for her attention, it has never felt like a relationship based on money. It has always felt like two old friends having a chat. She has slowly become part of his family.

  Nancy is right. He’s going back to a sexless, deeply flawed marriage and this is depressing. His life will play out. He and Tulah will do some sort of marriage counselling. They might go to a retreat in Arizona and learn how to touch each other again, learn how to trust each other again. They’ll do some sort of lame closing-your-eyes-and-falling-backwards-into-each-other’s-arms exercise. The girls will grow up and leave home. They’ll get married, have kids of their own. Maybe Nancy will take up painting as a hobby, or perhaps she will try to write a book. He will retire. He will still love to work with trees so he’ll putter around the yard and the neighbours’ yards, offering up advice. He’ll walk around the neighbourhood with a pruning saw. And then he will die. Or he will get very sick and then he will die. He will become old-old and be a burden on everyone in his life, and then he will die. His life is a roulette ball that has landed on the black number thirty-six and now it’s just a matter of waiting for the wheel to stop spinning. And this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a ticking-down roulette wheel and a whimper. Between the desire and the spasm. Between potency and existence. He has become one of Eliot’s Hollow Men. But he does not want to be a Hollow Man. He wants to grit his teeth and squeeze the extraordinary out of this life, and he wants to do it with Tulah. Because she is his first and best witness. He thinks about holding her hand – there is a particular way that they mesh their fingers together and in that meshing is a deep love. It is sometimes slippery but it’s there in the DNA of that grasp.

  “How am I beautiful?” Nancy says.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You said I was beautiful. Tell me how I am beautiful.”

  “Jesus, Nancy. I don’t see the point. Are you really that vain? I mean…”

  “…I want to know,” she says. “Tell me.”

  He sighs. “I’m not playing this game with you.”

  “And I am taking a walk out to the edge of the balcony.”

  A jolt of panic flashes through him. Jesus Christ! She’s got Death in the room with her and she’s going to jump. This is her clever way of telling him she’s going to jump. Ray gets out of his car and looks up. He is standing on the street and fear is his only constant. Fear is his companion now and it’s not going to leave. Ray sees balcony after rising balcony but no Nancy. From where he is, unless she’s out there on the edge, he can’t tell which balcony is hers.

  * * *

  Adam Farnsworth calls on a Friday morning. Ray stands up. He picks up the phone.

  “Adam,” he says. “How are you?”

  “Not so good,” Adam says. “It’s that thing you and I talked about. It’s not going to fly. My people have come up with a solution but the City Manager’s office thinks it’s too expensive. They balked at the price tag. They’re not going to send it up. It’s not happening. I’m sorry.”

  “Is there anything…”

  “…I met with Bruce yesterday. This is an election year. Money is tight right now, and they’d rather plant new trees. You might be able to sell it to a new administration at some point in the future.”

  “Can we try to take it to council ourselves?”

  “You’re up against potholes and school lunches for poor kids. Your trees will lose every day of the week and three times on Sunday. I’m sorry, Ray.”

  It’s done. His scheme to save trees is done. This knowledge sinks into Ray. “I appreciate everything you tried to do, Adam. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “Let’s go for coffee sometime.”

  The line goes dead and Ray kicks his garbage can, hard. It flies across the office and whacks against the window. He wants to find a way around, but he can’t focus right now. Samantha, his executive assistant, whose hair is always pulled back severely, knocks on the door – opens it slowly. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. Fine,” Ray says. “I just got some bad news.”

  Samantha pulls the door shut and Ray
clears his afternoon. He checks the schedule to see where his crews are. He will hang out with trees and people who love trees and to hell with everything else. On his way out, he looks at Samantha and the three stacks of files piled on her desk.

  “Sam,” he says. “I’ve cleared my calendar. I want you to take the rest of the day off. Go to a movie. Go home. Go shopping. Go for a glass of wine. I don’t care.”

  “Mr. Daniels,” she says. “I have…”

  “…whatever you have, can wait. Go.” He pauses in the doorway, turns around and puts a fifty dollar bill on Samantha’s desk. “Go and have a really great glass of wine, on me. I insist.”

  * * *

  Ray watches as a breeze releases a mess of leaves from the elms along the street. He’d like to think the leaves have a distinct order in their falling. He entertains the whimsy that they let go when it’s their turn. He imagines it’s all about the mathematics of beauty – twenty-three leaves let go right now, thirty-four leaves in the next gust of wind, four leaves in the next, and so on. But of course, this sprinkling of leaves is a crazy random chaos. There is no mathematics of beauty.

  A group of pigeons frightens and takes off quickly over top of Ray’s car. And then he sees her. He sees the woman from the elevator, the blunt, sexy woman with the flowery tattoos; the one wearing the black cocktail dress and a grey scarf wrapped around her neck. As she walks away from his car, Ray can see the luxurious fluidity of her gait. She moves smoothly and quickly along the sidewalk and he wonders if she is cold. She must be cold without a coat. His first impulse is to get out of his car and run after her, gently touch her arm, and say: “Hey. Hi. Again. Hi, again.” He imagines her smiling knowingly, as if she is mildly amused by his awkwardness, and she can read his intention, even though he is not entirely certain of his intention. She will say nothing and they will stand in the middle of the sidewalk, locked together, as mothers with children move around, old men with poodles move around, and lovers release hands – are split in two by the rocks in the middle of the stream.

  He sits in his car, looking at the dull grey day and the trees along the avenue. Ray watches as the leaves on the sidewalk part to let her through. It’s as if they are blown aside by a gust of meticulous wind. A swatch of bare cement is left in her wake. He wants her to pause as if she just thought of something important, turn around, and walk back to his car. He wants to watch her getting closer to him, the movement of her body, the sway of it, and her determined, curious face. He wants her to lean into the car and kiss him hard on the lips. He wants her to tell him exactly what to do. He wants to do everything she asks.

  “I release you, Ray,” Nancy says.

  “What?”

  “I release you. Go home to your wife. I’m tired of this so-called conversation. I’m tired of you. I’m going to bed and in the morning, I will…well, who cares. In the morning I’ll do something that is none of your business. I’m going to dream about a life in which I never met you. I’m going to wipe you away, like a dirty countertop.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “No, I am not fucking okay, but I’m also not going to jump off this building because of you. You are charming, Ray, but underneath your skin, you’re not a nice person. And when I was with you, I was not a nice person either. I was an awful person and I wallowed in this delusion. I am not blaming you. I blame me.”

  “I’m sorry, Nancy. I am truly sorry about this…”

  “I have to tell you something, Ray. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I hope your daughters never meet anyone like you.”

  Ray inhales and holds. He pulls the phone away from his face. This flat statement stings. It takes his breath. She’s right, of course. He also hopes his daughters meet someone better than him.

  “Well, we’re being honest, right?”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “You sound like you’re a good dad. And they sound like great kids. I hope they meet and fall in love with men who are not living inside a lie. That’s all I meant.” Nancy realizes she’s just hurt him and she feels awful about it.

  Ray’s head is swirling. What if this is all a lie? Every move. Every action and every utterance of love. All lies. Big lies, little lies, white lies, black lies, and lies of omission.

  “I…” Ray watches the wind move through the elms. He is drained. He wants to hide from his own life. “I hope that too,” he says.

  “I am not saying this to be mean. And not to hurt you. Just honest, you know?” Now she’s apologizing and she has no clue why.

  “Yeah, I know,” he says. “I know.”

  “Go, Ray. Go, before I get mean again and have the urge to drop something else on you. Something bigger.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “What do you mean? I told you. I’ll go to bed and fall asleep, and wake up, and do something. In the morning, I will sit on the edge of the bed and take a breath. And then I will continue to breathe. By noon, I will have forgotten your face. By dinner time, I will be hard-pressed to recall your name.”

  “Death is not waiting around is he?”

  “No. Death? Death isn’t real, Ray. What’s wrong with you? Listen, if he comes back I’ll send him over to your house.” She looks at the empty couch where Death was sitting. She suspects he is in the bathroom, though she does not know why. Does the Angel of Death pee? Is he in there primping? Combing his hair?

  “That’s nice,” Ray says.

  “Oh my God, did I hurt your feelings again?”

  “It’s just that this was never about wishing you dead. I have always wanted you to be alive and well. I want you to be happy.” He looks out the window. He realizes Nancy doesn’t understand the reason he has been sitting in his car for the past four hours – feels like twelve – is all about her being well, and happy, and alive. Most importantly, alive. How could she not get this?

  She blinks the tears out of her eyes. This is the man she loves. Regardless of wives, or intentions, or beginnings or endings, or even the Russian-speaking Angel of Death; love is love, and she believes Ray loves her the best he can, or could. It’s just it makes her so sad to think of saying goodbye. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Endings are always important. There is no reason this ending should not be a good one. If Death comes back I will put him to work cleaning up this apartment, and then I will send him on his way. I promise.”

  Death, who looks like Ryan Gosling now, has come back into the room and he is inching his way up the far wall, watching her, his back to the wall, pushing with his feet. When he reaches the ceiling he stops and closes his eyes. He becomes the gargoyle in the room and Nancy shivers.

  “That’s not right,” she says.

  “What’s not right?”

  Nancy giggles. “Nothing. I think I’ve had too much to drink. Go home. There’s nothing for you here. Not anymore. Even if you wanted to start again, there’s no point.”

  “You’re okay?”

  Nancy shakes her head. She thinks this conversation has moved firmly into the realm of pathetic. “Yes, Ray. I’m perfectly fine.” She does not have the courage to tell him everything she feels, everything she knows, the remainder of her story. She will hold her secrets because there’s an odd comfort in holding tight to these things. Sometimes it takes too much courage to be truthful and today she does not have any of that kind of courage.

  * * *

  In a penthouse apartment on Lafayette Street, in New York, a woman named Olga is packing Slava’s things into cardboard boxes. Some of the boxes will be forwarded to his sister. A book, The Habit of Rivers by Ted Leeson, is among the items that will go to the sister. Olga picks it up and flips through its pages. The book is well used, and apparently, well loved. There are annotations in the margins throughout, all scribbled in Russian. It is, as far as Olga can tell, a book about fishing. The letter falls from the pages onto the floor. It is addressed to Mr. Slava Petya but
inside it is something other than a letter to Slava. It is a letter to an unnamed girl, a milaya, a sweet girl. It is a letter that addresses the war in Afghanistan and a father who died in this war, and the love this father has for his family, but especially the girl. Olga reads the letter twice. In her second reading, she starts to weep, tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks. She is not weeping for the girl, the sweet girl, but rather, for herself. She remembers her own father and it ruins her heart a little.

  Olga slips the letter back into the pages of the fishing book and places it into the box going to the sister. She wonders if the sister is the sweet girl in the letter, but she cannot imagine Slava holding such a thing back from his sister. She wonders what happened to the writer of the letter.

  Chapter 2

  Nancy and Tulah

  Tulah’s Snow Journal

  Tuesday, September 22, 2015 #487

  I’m breaking the rules. I’m writing this entry before it snows. I’ve seen enough goddamned weather to know when it’s going to snow. I’ve paid attention to snow. I know the signs. These are snow clouds. The colour of bruised zinc. Dove grey. Massed up at the horizon in a particular way. I stopped on the back deck this morning, looked up, and sobbed. I do not know what’s wrong with me. This snow, the snow that will be here soon, is breaking my heart. I can’t seem to stop blubbering.

  My hormones are ramped up for some reason. I’m all emotion and short on reasons why.

  Ray is at a soccer game with the girls – the second-last game of the season. It’s Patience’s soccer game. Sarah usually sits in the stands and reads. She’ll look up and smile when there’s a goal but really, she supports her sister just by being there.

  Tulah opted out of the game because she had marking to do. She’ll go to the final game of the season.

  The phone rings. She picks up and listens to Principal Hartman. Lauren Smith is suing him, the school and the school board. There’s some sort of accusation of sexual harassment too. Apparently, Lauren Smith was not appeased. She wants all the students of Strathmore Senior High School to be taught creation, not just her kid and the children in Mr. Rubinski’s period six science class. Principal Hartman has been suspended by the board – they called it a deviation from the designed curriculum, and the protocols around accusations of sexual harassment include an automatic suspension until a full investigation has been held.