The Liar's Room

by Simon Lelic

  She straightens. Honestly, she chastises herself, what did you expect? Of course Adam has a past. Of course he wouldn’t have had a happy childhood. People who do the sort of thing he’s doing, don’t. It doesn’t give him an excuse. Plenty of people go through worse and come out of it only wanting to do good.

  And Emily. Think of Emily. Who is more important to you, your daughter, or this stranger who is effectively holding his own knife against Emily’s throat?

  Susanna checks the door again. She stretches out her hand. She feels dampness from the draining board as she clasps the knife and—

  “Boo!”

  Susanna spins and sees a monster at the door. It has goggling red eyes and a claw-shaped nose and teeth so prominent they could be tusks. She screams and falls backward against the sink. There is the sound of metal clattering on the parquet floor. It severs the cackle of Adam’s laughter.

  “What was that?”

  Adam removes the mask.

  “What did you drop, Susanna?”

  He looks and he sees.

  “Oh no. No, no, no.”

  He bends and he reaches, then stands up clutching what he has found. He looks furious, exactly like a spoiled child. “It’s going to be all fizzy,” he says. “If I open it now it’ll spill out everywhere.”

  Adam examines the can in his hand. There is a dent in the rim where it landed.

  Susanna attempts to shuffle sideways. The paring knife is pressed tight but visible against her wrist.

  “Oh well. I suppose it was my fault as much as yours.” Adam looks at Susanna and grins. “Sorry,” he says, waving the mask. “I couldn’t resist. I saw this hanging in your friend’s office when I was here last time.”

  “When . . . what?” Susanna endeavors to slip the knife into her sleeve. But it is awkward with her wrist bent backward and the blade feels hooked around a thread. If she isn’t careful she really will drop it.

  “When I was here before,” Adam repeats. “Last month, this was. I booked myself a checkup with . . . Ruth, is it? I liked her, Susanna. She was very complimentary about my teeth.” Adam flashes her another grin. This time it looks as much a growl. “Although I admit that wasn’t the real reason I came,” he goes on. “I wanted a chance to look around. To get the lay of the land, sort of thing. But anyway, that’s when I noticed this mask. I’ve been dying to try it on ever since.”

  The mask is Himalayan. Ruth went trekking there after her second divorce. It is a hideous thing, but Ruth insists on hanging it in her surgery. “If nothing else to set a good example,” she told Susanna as she ran a finger along the monstrously impressive teeth.

  “What have you got there?”

  All at once Adam is moving forward, the mask dropping to his side. The knife is pressed tight against Susanna’s arm. She is certain there’s no way he could see it.

  “What? Nothing. Where?”

  “There, Susanna.”

  Adam is frowning again. His arm extends forward and grazes hers.

  “Biscuits?”

  He has picked up the tin that Susanna took out to reach the Nescafé.

  “They’re Ruth’s,” Susanna stammers. It is the only thing she can think to say.

  Adam tucks the biscuit tin under one arm. He slips the mask back on his head, so that he is wearing it this time like a cap.

  “I like Ruth, Susanna. I really do.”

  Susanna swallows. The knife, finally, slides up her sleeve.

  “Now, let’s get back to it,” Adam says. “Shall we?”

  13.

  They are seated back in front of the fireplace. The room feels even smaller now than it did before, the air stale and fetid. The shadows are beginning to lengthen, like a crowd of figures closing in. Adam holds out the can of Diet Coke in the space between them—closer to Susanna than to him—with his fingertip curled around the ring pull.

  “Brace yourself . . .”

  He pops it open, and the Coke bubbles up and over. He is hoping Susanna will flinch but all she does is watch.

  Adam laughs even so, leans to slurp up the froth, then noisily sips from the can.

  He makes a face.

  “Eurgh.” He sips again, grimaces again. “Seriously, what’s the point of Coke without the sugar? I’m probably going to need some of that water after all, just to wash away the taste.”

  He sets the can down beside the jug of water and dangles his Coke-covered hand as he checks around for some way to clean it. He looks at Susanna, then proceeds to dunk his hand in the water jug. It comes out dripping, and he wipes it on the fabric of his armchair.

  This time Susanna cannot help showing her disgust. Adam has grown in confidence since Ruth left, and though his antics have been juvenile at best, they have also felt surprisingly intimidating. It occurred to Susanna before that Adam’s upbringing had damaged him and the thing she wonders about now is how badly. Maybe there is no getting through to him. Maybe the knife tucked up her sleeve really is Susanna’s best chance of getting out of this.

  “Your father . . .” she ventures, even so. Because to abandon hope like that would be to abandon the beliefs she’s fostered for the past fifteen years. It would be to deny the single positive legacy left over from the life of her son. “Is it possible you misinterpreted his feelings toward you?”

  Adam is immediately on edge. “What do you mean?”

  It is a dangerous topic for Susanna to address and normally she would not attempt to do so this directly. She would come at it obliquely, attempting to steer the discussion so that the client raised the subject himself. But that would be in a normal session, with a normal client. Here, now, normal isn’t a restriction that applies.

  “You were very young, Adam. You said as much yourself. And your father . . . Grief does very strange things to people. More than strange. It’s one of the most powerful emotions there is. Emotion, in fact, doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  Adam is listening. At the very least, Susanna has got his attention.

  “Believe me, I’ve experienced it myself,” Susanna goes on. “When you lose someone . . . it’s not that you change. It’s that the world does. Your senses, your feelings—everything warps, becomes distorted. Colors seem tarnished, smells curdle, taste becomes almost nonexistent. Grief: it’s like a drug. It’s so powerful it’s almost . . . hallucinogenic.”

  Up until this point Adam has been wearing the mask atop his head but he reaches up and slips it off. “Hallucinogenic?” he echoes. “Meaning you saw things, Susanna? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Susanna remains completely still. Something about her reaction, though, convinces Adam that he’s right.

  “What did you see, I wonder? Did you see him, Susanna? Did you see her?”

  Susanna stares. How long has it been since she pictured her? How long since she allowed herself to?

  “Do you see them now? I wonder. Does Jake haunt you even now?”

  He doesn’t. He hasn’t, not for a long time. But just for an instant, as she looks at Adam, his face morphs into Susanna’s son’s.

  Susanna blinks and the effect is gone. In place of the vision, though, Susanna hears a voice—the same voice that whispered to her before.

  You know him.

  Susanna clears her throat, recovers her posture. “It must have been very hard for your father,” she forces herself to say. “The stress of your mother’s illness. The way he must have felt after she died. Don’t you think?”

  From appearing pleased at his insight into Susanna’s afflictions, Adam suddenly seems distinctly uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to think about his father as a human being. As someone frail, fragile, a victim himself.

  “To lose a partner like that, so early in life,” Susanna presses. “Particularly when you have a young child.”

  Adam bridles. “You’re saying it’s my fault? The way m
y father treated me?”

  “Absolutely not. What I’m saying is that maybe your father’s behavior was more complicated than simple love or hate. Maybe for him the two emotions got confused. Like crossed wires.”

  Adam’s expression doesn’t alter. But it is at least fixed now, a wall Susanna can see she must find a way to breach.

  “Most of us, when we imagine diametrical opposites, tend to picture a horizontal line. But maybe, rather than a line, what we should be thinking of is a loop, where each extreme threatens to overlap the other.”

  There is a twitch of curiosity in Adam’s eyes.

  “Take, I don’t know. Politics, for example. The far right and far left often end up being indistinguishable. And hot and cold. Have you ever had that feeling when you touch something freezing and you think at first you’ve actually been scalded?”

  Adam shifts and Susanna knows he has.

  “Well, maybe it’s the same with love and hate. In fact I’m sure it is. And that’s what I mean by crossed wires. It’s no exaggeration to say that your father, in his grief, experienced an emotional earthquake. It’s no wonder that love and hate for him became so confused. Probably everything else he was feeling did as well. And I’m not saying it’s your fault and I’m not trying to claim the way he treated you wasn’t his. But maybe it wasn’t quite as black and white as you’ve come to believe.”

  Susanna waits. She watches Adam, who sinks a fraction into his chair. He is scowling but it is as much an expression of concentration.

  “There’s that phrase,” he says at last. “Isn’t there? ‘There’s a fine line between love and hate.’ Something like that, anyway.”

  “Exactly. That’s it exactly.” Susanna would like to say more, to drive the point home, but she knows that it will resonate more if Adam develops it himself.

  “So are you saying my father loved me after all? That . . . that I got it all wrong?”

  “I’m saying it’s not easy being a parent, even in the most stable of circumstances. Just look at me, for example. At what happened to us. Jake had a father and a mother, and even so . . . Well. You know exactly how things turned out for Jake.”

  It is an opening; a chance for Adam to switch the focus back to her. But he doesn’t take it.

  “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way. About my father . . . suffering . . . as much as I did.”

  Susanna feels a rush of adrenaline. She has experienced something similar in session before, when a client appears on the verge of a breakthrough Susanna had given up hope was ever coming. This time, though, the rush is laced with fear, hope, doubt, dread: a cocktail of competing emotions that makes the whole sensation that much more potent.

  She takes a breath.

  “And remember, Adam, there’s your own grief to take into account as well. To lose your mother, at the age you did . . . I simply can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”

  Adam’s expression hardens. “I told you—”

  “I know, I know. You said you didn’t feel anything. You also said you can barely remember her. So, what I’m wondering is, maybe some of those memories of yours have been repressed. Maybe your love for your mother got tangled the way your father’s did, and since then, this anger you feel, maybe that’s a reaction to the grief as well.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, grief has to go somewhere. It needs an outlet. Your father vented his on you. Yours turned into this fury you’re feeling, which you in turn vented on your father. And on . . . Well.” Susanna doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to.

  “On you,” Adam says for her, and he sounds almost ashamed.

  Susanna meets his eye. Her lips twitch as she raises a shoulder. Adam watches her for a moment, then turns his gaze, unseeing, toward the floor.

  It makes sense. It genuinely does. That Adam should admire Jake, yes, because Susanna can see how to someone like Adam, Jake might seem a kindred spirit. Confused, angry, let down by everyone around him. And Susanna is the parent who failed her son, the very personification of everything Adam has taught himself to resent. If his mother is dead and his father is for some reason beyond his reach too, Adam’s fury has to go somewhere. But if Susanna can show him that his rage is misplaced, that instead of feeling angry, he might simply allow himself to grieve . . .

  She feels that drumbeat of her heart again. She is scrutinizing Adam intently, trying not to show that she is. Is she right? Has she got through to him? What is he thinking?

  In the end, she can’t resist breaking the silence.

  “Adam?”

  He looks up, giving the impression he had forgotten Susanna was there. “Sorry. I’m trying to get my head around it, that’s all. Around everything you’ve just been explaining.”

  Susanna forces herself to stay quiet, to give Adam time.

  “So . . . I mean . . . if you’re right . . . what should I do?”

  Let me go! Let Emily go!

  Susanna wants to scream it. It takes all of her self-control to hold it in.

  Instead, she says what feels like the hardest sentence she has ever had to utter. “I can’t tell you what to do, Adam.” She takes another deep breath to try to steady herself. “I can only help you try to figure out why you’re doing it,” she goes on. “What it is you really want to achieve.”

  She is on the edge of her seat, Susanna realizes. She is leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingertips inches away from Adam. Susanna can’t see his eyes but from the way his hand is positioned around his mouth, he looks like he is on the brink of tears.

  Which is the first indication Susanna has that something is wrong.

  “You know, if what you’re saying is true,” Adam says, “it changes everything. What I’m feeling, what I’m doing here. Just . . . everything.”

  He peeks at Susanna through his fringe.

  Susanna pulls away. She feels her fingers curl, her jawbone clamp and then tighten.

  “All this time,” Adam says, and he gives a sob. “All this anguish, and the only thing I needed, it turns out, was to find someone who’d listen. Someone who’d show me the way.” Adam peeks again. His expression is a parody of gratitude. “Someone like you, Susanna,” he says.

  “Stop.”

  Susanna turns slightly away but not enough that she fails to see Adam grin. He sits straighter and pulls back his fringe, then leans to catch Susanna’s eye. He winces, as though embarrassed.

  “Was it the sobbing?” he says. “Should I try it again without the sobbing?”

  He doesn’t wait for Susanna to answer.

  He coughs, clears his throat, then leans forward, reassuming his position. “All this time!” he intones, this time with melodramatic flair. “All this anguish! The only thing I needed, it turns out, was to find someone like you, Susanna! Someone who’d listen!” He pauses, letting the words resonate, then collapses into a phony paroxysm of tears. His left hand flashes out and grasps Susanna’s, gripping it so tightly it hurts.

  “Let go of me.”

  Adam, head down, continues his wailing. Susanna struggles to pull away.

  “I said, let go.”

  She breaks free, abruptly, and Adam’s crying—his performance—dissolves into laughter. His amusement is genuine but his laughter isn’t warm the way it was before. Rather, it is how she has always imagined Scott laughing. Pete and Charlie too. The delight is inflected with cruelty, the pleasure derived purely from having caused pain. Watching him, listening to him, Susanna has never loathed anyone as much as, right now, she loathes Adam. She is this close—this close—to taking her chances with the paring knife. In fact she would impale him quite cheerfully. With her knife, his, either, both.

  “Sorry.”

  Adam’s laughter dwindles to a splutter.

  “Sorry,” he repeats. “I couldn’t resist. You seemed so exci
ted. So sure you’d cured me.”

  Susanna was wrong, before. There is one person she hates more than she hates Adam. It is only the thought of Emily that stops her plunging the knife into herself.

  Adam tilts his head, affecting disappointment that Susanna evidently can’t take a joke.

  “Don’t be like that,” he says. “Don’t be angry. I said, didn’t I? I told you. Everything you’ve been so busy analyzing: it was all a lie. Not the way I was brought up. Not my mother and father hating me. But the reason they did . . .” Adam watches to see if Susanna has caught on. She still doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about.

  She can tell she’s pouting but she’s powerless to stop herself.

  “Seriously, Susanna. You’re being too hard on yourself. You can hardly be expected to fix someone if you don’t know the reason they’re broken.”

  Give up, Susanna is thinking. You’re not going to beat him, so you might as well give up. This . . . hypothesizing. This guesswork, it’s only making things worse.

  “Here, have a biscuit.” Adam is holding out the tin he stole from Ruth. He shakes it and Susanna hears a clatter of crumbs. “No? Suit yourself.” Adam dips into the tin himself. He stuffs a digestive into his mouth, then resumes talking as he chews. “How about this?” He chases the biscuit with a sip of Coke, which elicits another grimace when he swallows. “How about I finish my story and then you can therapize away.”

  Susanna settles back soundlessly in her seat.

  “So . . .” Adam brushes his knees of crumbs. “I ran away. That’s how it ends. Or begins, I guess you could say.” His tongue probes biscuit from his teeth. “I was sixteen by the time I did, so this was just last year. I would have left sooner but, honestly? I was scared. Of just about everything really. Of life. The world. I wasn’t streetwise at all. I had no friends to teach me. There were kids I knew but no one I talked to. So I was scared and I was alone and, much as I hated my father, I didn’t see that I had anywhere else to go.”

  Adam is watching Susanna carefully, alert, she suspects, for any sign of ridicule.

  “And the other reason I stayed?” Adam goes on. “My education. Because I was scared, I was ignorant, but I wasn’t stupid.” He pauses and his gaze tightens. “You can see that, can’t you, Susanna? That I’m not stupid?”