Would I Lie to You

by Mary Lou Dickinson

  “Hi, Al,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”

  A slight smile played across his lips and extended to his eyes — the pleasure of recognition.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said. “Sorry I didn’t make it then.”

  “Were you ill?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.”

  “I was in Stratford for a couple of days. Family stuff.”

  She handed him ten dollars and a package wrapped in red-and-white paper, a ribbon, and a bow. He looked up and a tear ran down one cheek.

  Oh dear, she thought. She wanted to be helpful, to make a difference in people’s lives. Nonetheless, she felt there was always, in her generosity, an element of atonement. She was guilty and needed to do this to assuage her guilt. Was it a legacy of childhood events long before the conception of Gwen, long before her loss of innocence? Perhaps it was the outcome of the persistent admonition that she go to church or what she had heard there. Yet as part of a Protestant tradition, there had been no emphasis on confession. Many of her friends had confessed to the big priest with the quivering belly at the Catholic Church on the main street. Most of the rules of the predominantly Catholic town had emanated from his presence. She had been relieved she had not had to confess to that priest. Her mother’s watchful eye had been plenty to contend with.

  When Sue arrived back at the house, Hans opened the door. He seemed anxious to see her.

  “Gwen called,” he said.

  Jenny poked her head through his legs and tried to squirm out between them onto the porch.

  “You’ve been out, Jenny,” Hans said. “Just be patient. We’ll be going in a little while.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I have to make sure everything is ready for the real estate agent to show the property. And I want to feed the animals.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “No,” he said, but she could see that he was eager to be on his way. The city must be getting to him. Or maybe he was worried about the animals. He always missed them. He always missed the country. He had told her how he liked to be up high enough there to feel the breezes, see the wide sky, smell the farm air. “You know,” he had once told her. “If you look toward Toronto in the summer, you can see a large yellow cloud over it even on a fair day.”

  “It’s nothing really,” he said. “It’s just me. I get restless. I don’t like to be away for long. Besides, you have Gwen to call and it will give you time for that.”

  Everything he said made sense, but Sue did not want him to go. She recalled previous times he had left hurriedly, upset about something. Afterwards, he was always apologetic. “And if you ever want to convince me to stay, just strip,” he had joked. She could do that, but after they had laughed, he would still want to go. And it was clear he was leaving now to give her space as well as to get out into the country. To her surprise, she realized she needed it. A call with her daughter was not incidental. It was likely Gwen wanted to suggest when Sue would meet Gwen’s mother and family. She thought of them as her daughter’s other mother and other family, but in reality she was the other one.

  Hans began to pack the bag he had brought with him. He had a hairbrush and shaving gear as well as a change of underwear, a fresh shirt, and a sweater.

  “Do you always take that bag with you?”

  “Well, not this one exactly. I always have stuff in the car, but I packed this time for Christmas with you. But there are all kinds of reasons in the country for being well-prepared, especially in winter.”

  He sounded a bit impatient, but she decided to ignore that. “Okay,” she said. “Point taken.” But she marvelled at the swift change in atmosphere. “You seem cranky.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to be.”

  Sue was unprepared for Hans’s call only two hours later.

  “Heather’s still here,” he said. “I can’t say much.”

  “Sacre bleu,” she muttered, a blasphemy emerging from her childhood. She tried to swallow it. There must be some explanation. He did not deserve so much anger and she was not sure why she was angry or why she was directing all of it at him. She was silent. She thought Heather would have gone to the city with her daughter.

  “Listen,” he said. “It’ll be sorted out soon.”

  “Um,” she said, but she was dubious.

  When he hung up, she banged her fist on a table. Surely he did not expect her to be happy at this news. She took the vase of flowers he had given to her and threw the flowers in the bathtub. When he called, she would tell him to go fly a kite.

  When he did phone, he sounded contrite. “I bet you threw out the flowers,” he said.

  Sue took in a deep breath. “Not yet,” she said, knowing she could still retrieve them. “So what’s going on?” She was aware she had jumped to conclusions and that if she loved him she ought at the very least to hear him. She wanted to tell him she was going to see Gwen the next day and that they had spoken earlier.

  “She wants to stay at the farm for New Year’s to do some cross-country skiing.”

  “I thought she was at her daughter’s.” Sue could tell he was annoyed with the situation, surprised at it himself.

  “I didn’t expect this, but what can I do? I refused to leave when she asked me to, so she’s been going back and forth between the farm and her daughter’s condo. I never know what to expect. But she did come with Vivian to sign papers. The place is still half hers.

  Sue was silent. You could love someone even when that person had hurt you; you could go on even after someone died, she thought. What could she say? Sometimes, saying nothing was the wisest choice. Probably Heather needed this time to say goodbye to the farm, but Sue was hardly going to say that.

  “I’m not planning on staying in the same house with her for New Year’s,” he said. “I want to be with you.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  He hesitated. “In a way, I suppose I do. It doesn’t change how I feel about you though.”

  “So when will I see you?” she asked.

  “Soon,” he said.

  When she hung up, Sue wondered if it had been as difficult for him, as tiring, to deal with her grief over Jerry as this was for her. She climbed the stairs to her room where she lay down and fell asleep.

  *

  Sue dreamed of dogs and horses. A knife with jewels in the handle. A glistening blade. When she awakened, it was to the sound of a thumping noise against her window. Her body was rigid again, her jaw clenched. Yet she felt relieved to know that what had been so vivid was not real after all.

  She crossed the room to the window and looked down toward the front of the house. Hans stood on the street below making a snowball. He grinned up at her as he leaned back and threw it at the glass panes that separated them. Sun streamed down on the morning newspaper on a small table near her. It was open to a partially done crossword puzzle. What starts with “H” and has four letters? She had printed “hammer” down the side column already, so the first letter for the four across was “H.” If it were meant to be a Dutch name, “Hans” would work. But that was not the clue; the clue was “A full house in poker.”

  The snowballs continued to thud against the glass. Sue felt as if she had come across a long bridge to the other side. No matter what the journey, Jerry would have died. And Thomas would have turned up. She would have had to face the void of losing Jerry and then the bridge across it without the foreshadowing of any appointment with Hans. It was odd how sometimes everything changed after taking some unexpected step. Imagine if she had never come across that listing in Toronto Life before Jerry died. She would not have called to make an appointment with any psychic without that push and who knew what she would be doing now. She might not have set out to find her daughter. Not having Gwen in her life now seemed unthinkable.

 
She heard Hans’s key in the lock and his footsteps as he came through the door and up the stairs.

  “Surprise,” he said.

  Sue could feel his cool cheek against hers as he hugged her as well as the warmth of his body.

  “Say something,” he said.

  The sun shone through the window in a long streak of light filled with particles that spread into the room.

  “Well,” she said, “‘something’ is a word, but it’s not the one I’m thinking.”

  “What one are you thinking?”

  “Hallelujah!” she said, his optimism starting to course through her.

  He smiled and moved over to the crossword puzzle. “I’ll find a word in this for you,” he said. She watched him sit down, pick up the pencil, then lower his head over the newspaper.

  “What starts with ‘H’ and has four letters?” he murmured. “A full house in poker.” He paused, peering down at the puzzle with full concentration. “‘Hand?”

  “I think you’re right,” she said, leaning over his shoulder so she could see the clue. “Try it.”

  “It works,” he said, printing the letters “A,” “N,” and “D” in the allotted spaces. “Hallelujah.”

  Sue shared his pleasure at figuring this out at the same time as she wondered how she had missed something so obvious. She wanted to know how long Heather would stay in Canada, but decided not to ask. He would always love Heather in some way. All she could hope for was that the woman’s ghost would not continue to intrude on them.

  Before long, Hans was engrossed again. As she watched the intensity of his concentration, she thought if he could actually predict the future nothing they did made any difference. Still, whatever he said and whatever she believed, she was continually faced with making choices.

  “What about if I sold this house?” she asked.

  “Are you really considering that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But you did ask me to say something. Wouldn’t that qualify as ‘something’?” Glancing up, she saw Jerry smiling at her from a photograph on the wall. She knew more about him now, but he still remained in many ways a mystery. You could not know everything about anyone, she thought. Not even a husband. Nor would she even want to. There was so much she would probably never know about Hans either. It seemed likely they would argue at times. The sudden flare-ups when they did not understand each other would emerge. It seemed more natural than her marriage. And she understood now that the effort to preserve some semblance of perfection in any relationship was futile.

  “Maybe we could buy a small piece of land in the country somewhere.” She could feel her legs tremble again as she voiced thoughts so new to her they startled her.

  He turned to look at her as if he could not believe what he had just heard either. “Do you mean that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do mean it.” Even though she knew that once the words were uttered, she could not pretend she had not said anything, not even if she went on trembling at the thought that she could lose everything again. Jerry’s death had come early. It could happen to anyone. This reality would always haunt her.

  “I wouldn’t want to be too far from Toronto,” she said, “nor Stratford either. And I don’t want to be a farmer or live on a farm.” Her voice became stronger.

  “Surely we could have chickens,” he said.

  Sue noticed how hopeful he looked, his blue eyes watching her intently. Under his banter and flamboyance, she felt his vulnerability.

  “Lots of fresh eggs.” Sue smiled.

  “I suppose I’m going to do the cooking.”

  “I might help a little.”

  “We’ll have dogs. And cats,” he said hopefully.

  “Rusty and Jenny, of course,” she said. “But we’d have to draw the line somewhere, wouldn’t we?”

  “Somewhere,” he said. “Another word.” He started to hum again.

  The sound soothed her and she was glad of his presence, of the dream they were already beginning to build together. A dream that would include her daughter and Thomas, of course. The list went on. The tune Hans was humming became clear to her. Was it where they would find their new home? Somewhere, over the rainbow…

  “Maybe we ought to start looking,” she said quietly, aware there could be times when courage would fail her, relieved that this was not one of them.

  *

  It was after Christmas celebrations and before the beginning of another year that Sue met Gwen sitting in the restaurant where they first met on the Danforth. She was at a small table with her eyes glued to a book, holding her head up with one hand. Everyone was away, Gwen had told Sue on the telephone. A change of plans. Her mother was in Kincardine and the kids and their father were skiing. Sue’s meetng with Gwen’s mother was to happen now in early January.

  “Hi,” Sue said.

  Gwen looked up, startled. “Oh, hi,” she said, closing her book.

  “Good read?”

  “I like mysteries.”

  “My father liked them, too.” Sue did not say that, at some point, most of them seemed contrived to her.

  The waitress came by and Sue ordered some carrot cake with a coffee.

  “I don’t read them for the plot,” Gwen said. “Sometimes I even skip ahead and see how it works out, then go back and keep on reading. I often wonder what people do in extremes. I don’t think anyone ever knows for sure. Like torture. I like to think I have strong ethical principles, but how do I know what I would say or do were I tortured?”

  “Hardly light reading. Or even light mystery. I think my father read them for diversion.”

  “I don’t usually.”

  “I gathered.” Sue tried to find the words to ask if it had something to do with the decision she had made when Gwen was born. Something about justice. She feared she would say the wrong thing if she did. “Does it bother you that the main characters are so often either in police work or forensics?” she asked instead. While she knew it was the point of many of these novels, that the character was a detective or forensic specialist, she liked the occasional story she found where this was not the case.

  “It doesn’t matter really what the characters do for a living if you’re interested in something beyond the crime itself. Good and evil. What would make a good character give up scruples to commit a criminal act, for instance.”

  Sue nodded, although it was a bit confounding. For her, if fiction did not distract her from the horror of the news, for instance, it did not interest her. She had a small gift in her purse and she slid the box across the table. Gwen explored the tissue in the tiny packet until her fingers revealed a pair of small silver hoop earrings.

  “They’re exquisite,” she said, but then frowned. “It’s too bad, but I can’t keep them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I – I – I.” Gwen’s face became a mask, expressionless. “You see,” she said. “My mother could never give me something like this. I…”

  “They’re not terribly expensive.”

  Gwen wrapped the earrings in the tissue again and put them back in the box. “Thank you,” she said. “It was very thoughtful of you.” She put them into her purse.

  Sue did not understand, except that the topic had now been dismissed. She suspected there would be a lot more uncomfortable moments between them. How could it be otherwise?

  “I hope you’ll find you can wear them,” she said. “From what you’ve told me about your mother, I suspect she’ll be glad you have some token from me to mark finally finding each other.”

  Gwen did not respond to this comment, except to nod slightly.

  “You met Peter,” Sue said. It sounded almost like a question, but it could as well have been a statement.

  “Yes.”

  “How was that?”

  “It was strange to know th
at he had no idea I existed until you told him. I was glad in a way. He wasn’t able to make any decisions when I was born he would later regret, I suppose.”

  “Do you think sometimes we know things even though we think we don’t?” Sue thought of Thomas. She would rather Jerry had told her, but now she saw there were little intimations that had made it impossible not to know there was something, like his visits to Florence when he had never asked her to accompany him.

  “So you think Peter knew about me?”

  “No, but I think he’ll put it together some time and realize that he should have tried to find out what happened to me when I disappeared from town. I think he didn’t because he couldn’t face that I might have been pregnant. He’s likely relieved now, especially when his wife and kids have been so accepting.”

  Maybe some of Hans knowing came from that intuitive sense, although Sue was convinced he also knew future events that were too far ahead for intuition. Sometimes, he made the most remarkable and detailed predictions.

  “He seems a gentle person,” Gwen said. “I’m glad he’s my father.”

  Sue watched the younger woman.

  “I think the father I had would like him, too.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Well, she already thinks she’ll like you.”

  “I was talking about Peter,” Sue said, but she recognized the note of hope and optimism in Gwen’s comment.

  “Oh yes, of course. Yes, she’ll like him.”

  Gwen opened her purse, removed a tiny gift bag from it and reached across to hand it to Sue. “Something for you.”

  Sue fiddled with the bag, thinking of the earrings and then of Florence. She had not told Gwen much about her except that she had died and that she was the one, along with Hans, who had encouraged her to look for her daughter.