The Kindest Lie

by Nancy Johnson

  Ruth had been three years old when their biological mother left them. Very few memories of the woman lodged in her brain, but on the last Christmas they spent together, Joanna wore a short red Santa dress with bells dangling from her butt. The bells jingled when she walked, and that sound made Ruth laugh. She would have followed her mother anywhere.

  In every fleeting, possibly phantom memory of their mother, Ruth had to begrudgingly acknowledge the woman’s beauty, her high cheekbones and those dimples Ruth had liked to press to see if they’d pop back out. That Christmas, Joanna surprised her with a mesh bag filled with marbles in every color imaginable. Ruth remembered being enamored with the marbles, rolling them on the kitchen floor, delighting in the noise they made, until Mama scooped them back into the bag and yelled at Joanna. Too young to understand the argument and desperate to play with those marbles, Ruth cried uncontrollably. It wasn’t until years later that Mama would relive that day, saying Joanna should’ve known better than to give a three-year-old a toy she could choke on. Careless, Mama said. Always careless.

  Eli would’ve been nine that Christmas, and she couldn’t recall what their mother had given him, if anything. Whenever she tried to get her brother to tell her what he remembered about Joanna, he changed the subject. She suspected their mother’s disappearance had been harder on him because he’d known her longer, loved her longer, had more memories to suppress.

  Christmas became a more sensible affair when she went to live with her grandparents. There was that time in Walmart when Ruth threw a tantrum after not getting the Cabbage Patch Kid doll she’d begged for, the one that came with a birth certificate you could frame. Their chubby cheeks and pinched faces fascinated her. Papa had been ready to cave, usually pliable after her desperate pleas, but melodrama around Mama rarely yielded more than a swat to the backside. She said, A girl your age doesn’t need to be playing house. No babies for you no time soon.

  That night, Ruth had seen Mama kneeling in the closet, murmuring something to Jesus to ward off any nascent baby-making spirits. Oh, the irony of embodying her grandmother’s unanswered prayers, becoming everything the old woman had feared most.

  Xavier wasn’t home from work yet, which gave Ruth uninterrupted time to wrap his Christmas present—a pair of Magnanni leather shoes, handcrafted in Spain. He had fawned over them obsessively on one of their trips to Nordstrom, admiring how the toasted-almond leather shone in the glint of the store lighting. He had vowed to own them one day. In a spontaneous moment, or a desperate one depending on how you looked at it, she had stopped at the Michigan Avenue store on her way home from work to buy them. He would whoop in delight at the sight of these shoes, and she needed to see him smile and watch his face erupt in joy again.

  The last few weeks, she and Xavier had moved through their home like roommates, careful not to invade each other’s space, leaving notes that revealed just enough information about their whereabouts to stave off any missing-person reports to the police. The silences between them stretched like a rubber band about to snap. When they did speak, it was only to communicate the mundane: Have you changed the furnace filter yet? I bought a Christmas gift for Harvey and put both our names on it. Their marriage reminded her of the trunk of a tree in late winter or early spring, and already she could see the cracks, the gradual splitting of the bark. In time, new wood grew around a tree’s wound, sealing it off from further decay. She held on to the hope that Christmas Day would be their new wood.

  With the wrapped Magnanni shoes tucked under the Christmas tree, Ruth felt ambitious that night, her impulse buy inspiring her to change into a dusty-rose silk negligee and drape a string of pearls across her body. She felt a bit silly. Besides, Xavier had never required a lot of packaging pretense; he had told her many times how sexy she looked in a baggy, ratty old T-shirt. But when he’d said that, he had no idea she’d been lying to him since the day they met. And besides, he’d been begging her to make love. She would do more than oblige him. She would do what she’d always done—overperform and exceed expectations.

  Staging herself seductively on the bed, she tried multiple poses: Lying on her side with one hand on her thigh. Kneeling on all fours. Finally, she settled on a playful pose resting on her stomach, a position that made her tiny breasts puff up like dough popping out of a biscuit can. Then, she waited.

  The first thing Xavier did when he walked into their bedroom was toss his keys on the nightstand. Still in his starched white shirt and dark gray slacks, he sat on the ottoman across from the bed, opening his laptop. Obviously, he saw her on the bed, but gave no indication that he noticed her body wrapped in silk and pearls.

  Holding her breath, she sucked in her stomach to camouflage the slight pooch that became magnified by the thin fabric of her negligee. She wondered what on the computer screen had him so preoccupied. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirtsleeves, still barely looking up at her. When he finally spoke, he sounded as officious and routine as a doctor in a patient exam room.

  “Okay, I know you want to check in on your son. What information do you have? I assume you’ve got the adoption papers somewhere. Who are his adoptive parents? We need a plan. He could be in New York or China for all we know.”

  Cold air chilled her bare skin. “No, I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  She curled into a ball on the bed. Xavier could see her there in her sexy display, but he hadn’t reacted at all. Nothing. And why so many questions all of a sudden when they hadn’t spoken of the baby in weeks?

  Quickly, she grabbed her terry cloth bathrobe and shoved her arms into it, too embarrassed to look up at him. His sudden, practical questions made her dizzy. Normally, she operated just as logically, applying the scientific method to every decision. As heavy a burden as her secret had been to carry alone all these years, Xavier’s probing seemed to double the load on her shoulders.

  “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”

  Laughing roughly, he said, “It’s not all of a sudden. You’ve had four years to come up with answers. The more I think about it, the more it burns me up that you could say nothing all these years. And now, when I’m trying to help, you don’t want to talk about the adoption papers.”

  “I never signed any papers. I don’t even know his name.” Just admitting that carved out a pit at the base of her stomach. The image from her dreams of a wide-eyed, lost boy wandering the dirty streets of some big city made her nauseated.

  When she’d gone home to Ganton the summer after her graduation from Yale, she’d seen little boys in the grocery store and at the bank and the post office and she’d felt a mix of fear and anxiety, wondering if a child standing near her in line could be hers. To this day, the backs of boys’ heads always caught her attention. She had become quite skilled at maneuvering until she saw their faces, the shapes of their eyes, the contours of their lips and noses. She even measured the heights of foreheads in her engineer’s mind, estimating how her son’s face had grown over time. And always, she looked for the birthmark on his left cheek. Parks and playgrounds toyed with her imagination the most, and she wondered if certain faces and smiles should feel familiar. But in reality, she doubted her son’s adoptive parents would’ve taken him somewhere else outside Ganton.

  Xavier looked incredulous. “You don’t even know who he is or who’s raising him? How is that even possible?”

  “I told you I was just a child myself,” she said, her voice thin and brittle.

  “But you weren’t seven. You were seventeen and old enough to ask questions and keep some records.”

  In all the years since she’d given birth, she’d convinced herself that naïveté explained her inaction. But Xavier’s words cut to the bone and revealed something she hadn’t considered—abject stupidity on her part. He hadn’t asked a direct question, so she didn’t give an answer. Her eyes roamed their bedroom and she looked everywhere she could except at him.

  “Once you were grown, you still didn’t ask any questions about the adopti
on? And what about your grandmother and brother?”

  There had been an agreement with Mama and Eli that they would take care of everything and she would go on with her life, never looking back. But now, that pact felt ridiculous, and seeing everything through her husband’s eyes, she felt embarrassed and couldn’t believe she’d let things go this long.

  In a small voice, she said, “I did the best I knew how at the time.”

  Forcing herself to hold his gaze, she looked into his deep-set light brown eyes. From the day they met at the art gallery, she’d always seen laughter and mischief in them. She searched them now for that warmth, but she could tell his stare would not thaw anytime soon.

  Xavier sat with his legs wide apart, rapidly tapping both feet. She could sense his growing frustration. “I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me. I told you about my mom and how she used to step out on my dad when I was growing up. That’s something I never told anybody.” Pinning her with his eyes, he said, “Nobody. Except for you.”

  Xavier worked his mouth the way he did when he had food stuck between his teeth. She turned away, realizing he was trying not to cry.

  Shortly after their engagement, he had confided in her that prim and proper Mrs. Shaw had been unfaithful to her husband, to Xavier’s dad. From what Xavier had said, it wasn’t just a one-time slip-up, either. Apparently, she’d been “addicted” to the thrill of being pursued by various men.

  His confession had torn at her insides. She imagined his humiliation, the way he always wondered as a kid what he’d done wrong to make his own mother turn away from her family. At the time, she’d vacillated between feeling endearment that he’d shared something so painful and guilt that she couldn’t or wouldn’t reciprocate.

  Somehow their family recovered, and Ruth suspected that had a lot to do with Mr. Shaw’s deep capacity to forgive. Ruth hoped for similar forgiveness from Xavier.

  She pulled the ties of her robe. “I don’t know what to say. I’m not as strong as you are.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” she said, hearing the pleading in her tone. “If I could turn back time, I’d tell you everything, but I can’t.”

  Xavier stood above her, his arms folded across his chest. “Would you? Would you tell me about your kid? Because honestly, I don’t believe you would. I trusted you, Ruth, but you couldn’t trust me.”

  He looked at her as if she were a stranger, and she lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “There’s nothing you can say now. Your silence these last four years has said everything I need to know.”

  “I have said I’m sorry every way I know how. It was a mistake not to tell you, I admit that. But can’t you see how difficult it is for me to live with this?” Would he make her pay the rest of her life for one lie of omission? A seed of anger began to take root inside her. “I won’t keep begging you to understand me.”

  He leaned against the wall, his head turned up to the ceiling. “Then I guess that’s that.”

  “I guess it is then,” she said, her face drawing up like crumpled paper. She repositioned herself on the bed so her back was to him and he couldn’t see her face. “I’m heading to Ganton for Christmas to spend some time with Mama and Eli. It’s been a while and I need to see them.”

  She hadn’t known that’s what she wanted to do until the words spilled out of her. When she glanced back at Xavier, his face clouded with confusion and then hardened, his eyes darkening in spite of his laughter.

  “You haven’t gone home for any holidays since we’ve known each other. I had to beg you to have our wedding in Ganton, and even then, you wouldn’t let me in the house. And now, you decide to go home for Christmas?” A hard laugh that turned into a snort escaped his lips. “I don’t think I even know you.”

  Heat seared Ruth’s face as if he’d pressed an iron to it. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she refused to shed them. How had they gotten here? The one man she thought she could lean on no matter what, the way she had with Papa, stood just a few feet away from her yet felt so far away.

  Without a word, she left Xavier alone in their bedroom and stomped off to one of the guest rooms. Together, they had decorated it with a steel platform bed and a slate-gray accent wall. A gas fireplace added warmth. Xavier had said it would be a perfect room for Mama when she came to visit. Ruth had agreed quietly, knowing her grandmother would consider it excessive and would likely never set foot in their home anyway. Running her fingers along the threading of the duvet cover, Ruth took a few deep breaths. Next, she opened the curtains and peered out at the black night.

  Their Bronzeville neighborhood stared back at her with all its growing pains, both beautiful and awkward at the same time. This place was usually all jazz, but sometimes blues, too, and late on nights like this, you could still hear the roar of race riots from the turn of the century and, in the background, the soulful sway of jazz in dance halls. Vacant lots stood stubbornly ugly next to sculptures and grand architecture, the Obamas’ home in Hyde Park only a ten-minute drive away.

  Ruth needed a sign, some guarantee that what she was about to embark upon would turn out okay. On good days, she had imagined her son loved and happy. But there were those nights, especially recently, when she woke up wet with sweat, thinking he was unhappy and struggling. She had no idea what she might find back home or if she would have a marriage to return to. But she saw now what she had to do. It was time for her to own up to her choices. The lies and the secrets had gone on for much too long.

  She would go home and confront Mama. She would get answers about her son.

  Seven

  Ruth

  As she crossed into Indiana, windmills turned as far as Ruth could see. Silos painted red and dusted with snow looked like fat peppermint sticks. Her damp palms slid on the steering wheel as she passed one mile marker after the next on the way to Ganton.

  She had no desire to uproot her son, to snatch him from the soil where he’d been planted. Maybe that’s why she had stayed away so long and hadn’t made any effort to find him before now. Having a son was like holding a puzzle piece that didn’t fit, no matter how many times you looked at the picture on the box. Still, not being in his life tore at something inside her, a rupture that time and marriage couldn’t stitch together again.

  Without any real plan, Ruth considered what she needed to do once she got to Ganton. First, she had to convince Mama to give her the name she’d withheld all these years “for all the right reasons.” Her reasons. Her ideas about what was best for Ruth.

  Shame stung her as she truly accepted how long she’d stayed away, and how she’d allowed herself to be bullied. Now, as she drove past the open fields of farm country, she remembered the life she’d once loved in Ganton. And there had been much to love, really. The water tower that grazed the sky, watching over them, tall and proud. The covered bridge she and Eli climbed up and lay on to get the best view of the stars at night. The rows of tall corn she crouched in as a little girl for games of hide-and-seek with her friends.

  Driving into Ganton, Ruth noticed the frost skimming the top of the Wabash River, and she pulled her car over to the water’s banks. She got out and walked gingerly across the ice to the river’s edge where she and Papa had once strolled, her tiny hand enveloped in his larger, callused one. So many times they’d walked to his favorite fishing spot. She had often been impatient to feel that tug on the line and Papa would remind her, Got to give it time, baby girl. They’ll bite when they’re good and ready. They had fished together for years until Papa got sick.

  Squatting, Ruth removed her glove and slid her left hand over the smooth ice that would melt in the spring. She remembered helping Papa pull the old lawn chairs from the trunk of his car, and then they’d sit here for hours in the kind of quiet that didn’t need filling, just the two of them, without Mama or Eli. Pride shone in his eyes, her telling him about her good grades in scie
nce and math. That look he gave her was one Ruth drank down as if she’d been languishing in a desert. He’d say, Study hard and get that piece of paper, girl. That’s going to be your ticket to the big leagues someday. Then nothing can stop you. Papa is proud of his baby girl.

  Eventually, he became too weak to even walk from the bathroom to his recliner in the living room, let alone out to the Wabash River. Lou Gehrig’s disease ravaged his nerve cells until they withered like leaves scorched by the sun.

  She remained grateful he hadn’t been alive to see her pregnant at seventeen. But during those nine months carrying her son, she stopped by the river when she was sure no one else would be around to “talk to” Papa and ask for advice. She needed his wisdom.

  As she entered downtown Ganton, a few of the old family-owned stores stood as skeletons, hollowed out and emptied, replaced by big-box retailers on the outskirts of town. Chesterton Road cut through the center of town, but the street seemed smaller than she remembered, as if time had shrunk it somehow in the few years since she’d last visited.

  Parking downtown, Ruth got out of her car. She trudged through the snow until she arrived at Lena’s This ’n’ That, a small shop, which fortunately looked just as tired as she had remembered it, with worn red-and-white-checkered curtains at the windows.

  In high school, Ruth would stop by the store after school to see Lena, the white woman who owned it, and buy green apple Jolly Ranchers just to get away from Mama. After Papa died, Mama had no one to bathe and nurse, so the idleness coupled with grief consumed her, and she fussed over everything from a fork that still had food stuck to it after a washing to a layer of dust behind the TV that had been neglected.

  We may be poor, but we’re clean, Mama would admonish.