Beautiful Lies

by Jessica Warman

  “Did you take something? You should try ibuprofen.”

  “I did,” I lie. “But it didn’t help much.”

  She sighs again. She finally looks at me. “You should go upstairs and talk to Charlie.”

  I shake my head. “Is that all? Aren’t you going to yell at me for losing my job?”

  Another sip. Her shoulders slump a little bit. She’s tired. “We can talk about it tomorrow, Rachel. I can’t do it right now.”

  I don’t move for a few seconds. I just stand there, looking at her, waiting for her to say something else. I’d almost rather she yelled at me. Her weary indifference is more unsettling than anger would be; at least I know how to deal with her when she’s angry.

  But she only continues to gaze at me with an odd, sad look on her face. Her life, I realize, has not turned out the way she expected it to, not at all. But then, none of ours have.

  “Aunt Sharon?” Even as I’m pronouncing her name, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say next, if she lets me say anything at all. I can almost see her trying to summon enough emotional strength to respond.

  “Yes?”

  The words come out before I have a chance to think them through. “Do you remember the day you took us shopping for homecoming dresses? We were sophomores. We drove into the city early in the morning. Remember?”

  “Sure I do. Why?”

  I never thought I’d be telling her what I overhead that day, but I can’t stop myself. Bringing it up right now seems cruel. She’s tired. She’s upset. I do it anyway, though. It’s like I can’t stand to go one more day without knowing why she said those things.

  “While you were paying for our dresses, the saleswoman asked you if we were your daughters. You said yes. She asked if you had any other children, and you said no. I heard you.”

  My aunt looks at her hands. She fiddles with her wedding band, twirling it around her finger in a worried gesture. For a second I think she might cry.

  She doesn’t. She presses her hands against her frosted beer mug. “I poured this the wrong way,” she says. “See how there’s so much foam on top? When we were in high school, at parties, your mom always had this method for dissolving it. She’d rub her finger on her face, and then she’d stir it around in the foam.”

  “You went to parties in high school? With my mom?” I can’t imagine my aunt surrounded by fun or laughter. I can’t imagine her approving of a party full of high school students, much less attending one.

  The question seems to upset her far more than my revelation of what I overheard at the dress shop two years ago. “Of course I went to parties. That surprises you, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe a little,” I admit.

  “I even had a nickname.” She glances into the living room, where my uncle is still watching television. “I had this boyfriend named Anthony, but everyone called him Tony. He moved here from New York City at the beginning of our senior year. He drove a red Camaro.” She laughs. “Can you imagine? Me riding in a red Camaro with this beautiful, sophisticated boy? At least, we all thought he was sophisticated. He sold a lot of pot, I remember.” Her eyes crinkle at their corners in a reflex of disapproval.

  “What was your nickname?”

  “What? Oh, right—it was Sherry. Sherry Baby.” And she starts to hum softly. I recognize the song: it’s “Sherry Baby” by the Four Seasons.

  “What happened to him?”

  She stops humming. She seems lost. “What happened to whom?”

  “Your boyfriend. Tony.”

  “I have no idea. We broke up after a few months, and we graduated shortly after that. I went off to college and met your uncle. A couple of years later, we had Charlie. You know the rest. I don’t think I’d recognize Tony if I passed him on the street tomorrow. It’s funny, because at the time, I was so in love with him. I thought we’d get married after high school, and the rest of our lives together would be perfect.” She sips her beer. “I was stupid back then, Rachel. I didn’t know anything about life. Someday you’ll understand what I mean.”

  My aunt has never talked much about her youth until now. I’m still not sure I believe anything she’s saying; maybe she’s making it all up, trying to convince me there was a time when she was cool. She’s right about one thing, though: the idea of her riding around town in a Camaro with a cute boy from New York City seems impossible.

  “I remember the day I took you shopping,” she says. “We had so much fun, didn’t we? You and your sister tried on all those dresses … you both looked so beautiful.”

  “You let us buy Wonderbras that day too,” I say. My sister and I were giddy over them. For an instant, my thoughts shift to Kimber and her cutlets, and I feel almost ashamed by the fact that I got to own a Wonderbra despite already having perfectly adequate breasts.

  “I remember what I said to the saleswoman too.”

  I’d expected her to deny it, or insist that I misheard their conversation. “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “…”

  “…”

  “Why did you lie, Aunt Sharon?”

  She leans her elbows on the table and rests her chin in her hands. “Don’t you ever wish you could be someone else, Rachel? Even for just one day?”

  When I don’t answer her right away, it’s like the spell she’s been under is suddenly broken. She sits up and shakes her head a little bit, like she’s coming out of a daze. “Well. I have to finish these bills before I go to the post office tomorrow.” Her voice is crisp again. “Tell your cousin to get some sleep.”

  When I reach the second-floor landing, Charlie’s bedroom door is closed most of the way, but not completely. I can hear the soft mewing of kittens within. I nudge the door open and see my cousin curled up on his side in bed. He’s already asleep, snoring softly, his sheets pulled up to his chin, a pair of bulky headphones over his ears. The headphones are attached to his iPod, which is clipped to the collar of his white undershirt. The music is turned up so loud that I can hear it from across the room. I can’t help but smile. The song is “Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles.

  As I’m looking at him, I notice something moving beneath his sheet, near his stomach. Taking careful, slow steps so as not to wake him—although he’s always been a deep sleeper—I lean over the bed and tug back the sheet. There, nestled at his side, are all four of the kittens.

  They’re asleep. At least, I think they are—they’re probably not old enough yet for their eyes to have opened. They lay in tiny gray balls, so close to one another that I can barely tell them apart, each of them no bigger than my cousin’s fist. They don’t even look like kittens, really—more like some kind of unknown, furry creature, sort of like a tiny squirrel crossed with a miniature rabbit. They are far too small to have climbed up here by themselves, I know. Charlie has brought them into bed with him. He wants to keep them close.

  At the other side of his room, Linda McCartney is awake and watching me. She sits on her side, her fuzzy tail beating against the beige carpet. She’s skinny all over, except for her belly, which is fat and distended, swollen with milk. It looks like she’s nursed recently; the fur around her nipples is wet and shiny.

  Charlie’s breathing is deep and even. He looks incredibly peaceful right now, his serene expression so different from how I’m feeling inside. As I watch him, I can only think of one thing: I want to sketch him like this.

  So I go up to my room, find a sketchbook, and hurry back downstairs. I shut his door behind me and sit on his bedroom floor with my legs crossed, trying to work quickly so my aunt or uncle doesn’t catch me in here, but still trying to enjoy the act of drawing, which I haven’t done in days.

  My mother taught me how to draw and paint. When I was four, my dad built me my own miniature easel. He set it up beside my mom’s, and she and I would spend hour after silent hour that way, eyes focused on the blank spaces as we filled them in, trying to breathe life into our subjects on paper.

  When I was thirteen and living with my
aunt and uncle, I completed my first oil painting. It took me seven months. It was a painting of my late grandfather, who I never had the chance to meet; he died long before I was born. I worked from some photographs that my grandmother had provided for me. Sometimes my aunt told me stories about him. She remembered the tiniest details: once, she described to me how he used to brush her hair when she was a little girl. “He was so gentle,” she told me. “Your grandma was always in a rush to get me ready. She’d tug a comb through my knots, yanking so much that I’d cry sometimes. Your grandpa had these big, rough hands that looked clumsy and intimidating, but when he’d brush my hair, he was so gentle that he barely touched me. I’d go to school with knots all through my hair. I didn’t even care.”

  Once the painting was finished and framed, I presented it to my grandma for her birthday. She wasn’t taking medication at the time, and it showed. She was disoriented. She’d stay up for five days straight and then sleep for three. She moved the Captain into her family room—he was already stuffed by then—and she’d watch soap operas with him in the afternoons, carrying on long, one-sided conversations, pausing after she spoke, pretending to listen to his responses.

  When she saw the painting, my grandma stared at it for a long time without saying anything. Her expression shifted out of focus, and she started to sway on her feet, almost like she was going to pass out. My aunt grabbed her by the elbow. “Mom, are you all right?” Her tone was a shade harsher than concerned. “Mother! Answer me!”

  My grandma smiled at me. “I see him,” she said.

  I stared at her, listening, trying not to reveal how scared I felt. “Who do you see, Grandma?”

  “Oh, I don’t know his name. He’s a looker, though. A young man, Alice. A young man guides your hand.”

  “Mom!” my aunt barked again, genuine anger in her voice. “Stop it!”

  It was like she’d slipped into a kind of trance. When I was thirteen, I wanted to believe so badly that my grandmother had a special ability to see things others couldn’t. But my aunt had no patience for her mother’s displays. She’d been putting up with them her whole life. To her, there was nothing special about it at all. It was just simple lunacy.

  I lose track of time as I sit, sketching Charlie. Maybe it’s been twenty minutes, or maybe it’s been two hours. That’s what happens to me when I draw: I go somewhere else. It’s the most amazing feeling.

  As I’m finishing up, I stare at the kittens, my hand working to draw their wispy, almost invisible whiskers. The four of them are completely still, except for the faint rise and fall of their rib cages as they breathe. When the drawing is complete, I set aside the sketchbook and approach the bed. They can’t stay here with him all night. They have to be with their mother.

  One by one, I pick them up and move them to the floor. Immediately, they find Linda and burrow close to her, their tiny mouths opening as they search for milk in the darkness.

  But when I pick up the last kitten, it feels oddly heavy in my hand. It is warm and limp. It’s not breathing.

  Charlie will be devastated. I consider taking it downstairs, giving it to my uncle and letting him worry about it. These things happen, I know; the kittens are weak and small. Things die all the time, every day, but that won’t matter to my cousin. He’ll be heartbroken.

  I take the kitten to its mother. Before I set it down beside her, I hold it against my chest with both hands. I take long, deep breaths with my eyes closed. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not expecting anything to happen. But it feels right to hold it close, my hands cupped so tightly around its body that, if it were alive, I’d be worried I was going to hurt it.

  After a minute or so, I lay it gently on the floor. I pull Charlie’s sheet up to his neck again. I turn down the volume on his MP3 player, the sounds of “Hey Jude” receding until I can barely hear them.

  The day feels like it has lasted forever. Despite my long nap earlier, I feel exhausted all over again. I can’t concentrate either; when I try to focus on the night’s events, they are nothing but a blur, and for a second I almost convince myself that I’ve been asleep this whole time, that I haven’t woken up from my nap yet, and everything that’s happened to me—at work, with Sean, with TJ—is a bad dream.

  Right now, what I want is to sleep without dreams. To do so, though, is going to require a healthy dose of pharmaceutical assistance. Rachel doesn’t even like to take NyQuil because she says it makes her feel fuzzy the next day. I, on the other hand, seem to have a natural affinity for self-medication.

  I guess it runs in the family. When we were kids, Rachel and I grew to recognize the distinct smell of marijuana that used to come from our parents’ closed bedroom door some evenings. We didn’t know what it was at the time, of course, but I’ll never forget my first teenage encounter with it, at a party a few years ago, and the instant recognition of its odor. Rachel was at that party, too, and she got so upset when it became clear that our parents had been toking up while their daughters played in the next room.

  The realization that my parents were far from perfect came slowly to me over the years. I’ve never held it against them, though. If they had been different in any way, then everything else would be different, too, in ways I can’t begin to imagine. I don’t love them because they did everything right. They were my parents; I would have loved them regardless. Perfection is subjective, especially when it comes to people. To me, they were exactly what they were supposed to be. Until they died.

  My aunt and uncle, despite all their outward squareness, are not so different from my parents. My uncle’s side of their walk-in closet is neat and orderly; everything about it screams normal. But on the very top shelf, behind a row of neatly folded sweaters, there’s the motherload: it’s a metal safe built right into the wall. Just the sight of the thing, all mystery and possibility, gives me a shiver of excitement.

  I pull out one of the dresser drawers and stand on the edge in order to reach the safe. Two years ago, when I first stumbled upon its existence during a routine snoop session while I was home alone one afternoon, I guessed the combination on my second try: 04-17-91. It’s Charlie’s birthday.

  Even though I already know what’s inside, I still get a thrill every time the door swings open. There are a few file folders containing legal documents: my aunt’s and uncle’s wills, birth certificates, social security cards, that kind of stuff. There are the keys to the Porsche, which will have to stay put as long as they’re in here; I can’t take anything too obvious or my aunt and uncle will realize I’ve found their best hiding spot. There are several bottles of prescription painkillers, leftovers from a triple root canal that kept my aunt in a foul mood for pretty much all of last winter. And way in the back, pushed into the corner, there’s a Ziploc baggie of primo dope and a package of rolling papers. The pot is actually mine; my aunt “accidentally” found it while “cleaning” my room a few months ago. Why she was cleaning underneath my mattress remains a mystery. In any case, my stash got confiscated, and I got grounded. Good, upstanding citizens that they are, my aunt and uncle claimed to have flushed the pot. I never believed them, not for a minute. And I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty helping myself to a small amount from time to time—that, along with a few of the papers and a couple of painkillers that my aunt will never miss.

  I go into my room, straight to my bathroom, and wash down the painkillers with a glass of water. Then I curl up in the oversize window seat facing the backyard. Slowly and carefully, I roll a small joint. When I light it up, I lean out the window as far as possible, trying to prevent the smoke from coming into the room.

  Once I’ve finished, I leave the window open and change into my pajamas. My stomach is empty; the pills should be kicking in soon.

  But just as my surroundings are starting to blur, I remember my sketchbook. It’s still in Charlie’s room, open to the drawing of him and the kittens. As tired as I am, I know I can’t leave it there. I’m supposed to be Rachel, and Rachel doesn’t draw. />
  I rush downstairs to retrieve it. The TV is on in the living room; my aunt and uncle are still awake, which means they probably haven’t checked on my cousin yet. I crack his door open and lean over to pick up the sketchbook from the floor.

  I stop. I stop moving, stop breathing, stop thinking. I stare across his room, astounded by what I’m seeing. It’s impossible.

  Linda is still on the floor with her kittens beside her. They are nursing.

  All four of them.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My sleep is hard and dreamless until my alarm jerks me awake after what feels like only seconds of unconsciousness. My room is dark. I’m freezing, and the air all around me feels cold and damp; it’s because I slept with my window open. I’m covered in gooseflesh as I climb out of bed and patter across the floor in my bare feet, fumbling with the buttons on our alarm clock, trying to shut it off, to hit snooze, to do something to make it stop beeping. But nothing works; not the buttons, not the volume dial, not even a good, hard smack. Finally, I lean over to unplug the damn thing. That’s when I notice the time. It’s two a.m. I have no recollection of setting the alarm at all last night, much less programming it to go off right now.

  My throat hurts. My mouth is so dry that my tongue feels like it’s been coated in sawdust. Suddenly I’m so thirsty that all I can think about is getting some water. I go into my bathroom and cup my hands beneath the faucet, drinking from them again and again, but it doesn’t seem to help; I might as well be downing salt water for all the good it’s doing, each sip somehow less satisfying than the last. Even after I lean over to place my mouth directly on the flow of water, unable to gulp fast enough to keep up with it, soaking the front of my shirt, it’s not enough. I need a glass, something that can be refilled. I go downstairs, into the kitchen, wincing with every creak of the floorboards. My aunt has always placed an over-the-top emphasis on maintaining proper sleep habits. Even when Rachel and I had sleepovers at our house, she insisted that we go to bed at a decent hour. She claims it has to do with the underestimated importance of circadian rhythms, that the body is thrown completely out of whack without a consistent routine, but that’s not really why it bothers her so much. It’s because my grandma goes for days without sleep sometimes, slipping deeper into the funhouse of her mind with every passing hour, until she has no choice but to shut down. She used to do it all the time when my aunt was young, alternating between a manic alertness and total exhaustion that required days of sleep in order to recover. By the time she was twelve, my aunt claims she was basically running the household for my grandma, who rarely knew what day it was.