Liars

by Steven Gillis

  I followed them through the aisles, looked for signs of anything that might be different. Beyond the slight variation in their clothes, nothing had changed. Hip to hip they walked, merrily so, in stride and in tune, inseparable. Even when placing an item in their cart the task was done in tandem. At the checkout line he held her hand. Incensed, I went out to the parking lot, waited as they returned to their car, and from there I tailed them home.

  They lived halfway between the market and my house, on Centre Street, in one of the modest Cape Cod–style homes built in the 1930s. I have always liked the older houses, with their classic architecture, smart lines, and craftsmanship impossible to find today. My house is larger, more modern in design, a contemporary casting with a flat roof and windows everywhere. I texted their address and license plate number to my phone, went home, and ran a computer search. I thought I could discover their names this way, could root around and find additional information, but I was inexperienced and had no luck.

  Gloria came home and asked what I was doing. “Nothing,” I told her. “Honestly, nothing.”

  •

  Fitful, I failed to sleep, struggled through my morning’s writing, waited just long enough, then drove back to Centre Street that afternoon and got the names of my besotted pair off the mail in their box. Home again, I ran a new series of searches, the process easier now. I soon had information on both. He was Matthew Geere, a high school English teacher, a PhD in theoretical poetics, author of two collections of poetry brought out by a small indie press. I’d never heard of him, had never read him, and how good could he be if he was still teaching high school? I tracked down some of his work, ordered his collections, and read two poems and an essay he wrote on Elizabeth Bishop online.

  She was Cara Benz, a landscape architect in charge of the landscaping department at SunGreen Nursery. There were pictures of her from years ago when hale youth and confidence flattered her. I searched for more and found random posts, learned of projects she had designed and constructed, an impressive list including public gardens and private ventures. I read their wedding announcement from twenty years ago, discovered they now had two kids, a boy and a girl, both college age. Matt volunteered at the Outer House for troubled teens. Cara occasionally acted in plays put on by the Blackbird Theater. They seemed to have no religious affiliation, no church or temple, both were on Facebook and Twitter but with limited postings. Once I’d assembled this information, I had no idea what to do with it. Having their names and biographical sketches helped confirm their existence, but did nothing to inform me about their relationship.

  I turned off my computer, went downstairs, and poured myself a drink. My cellphone rang and I answered it, heard Lidia say, “Sorry, sorry. I butt-dialed you,” and then she hung up. Perfect, right? I refilled my glass, tried to laugh but couldn’t quite. Of all the sad affairs, what more could drive a man to drink?

  •

  Gloria had a gig that night, and rather than go with her, I stayed home and outlined a sketch of Cara and Matt’s affair. Having completed his graduate degree at the university prior to starting his teaching career at Benniman High School, Matt took a summer job as a mason, mixing mortar, laying bricks with the muscle in his arms. It was a good job and he welcomed the chance to be outdoors. He was excited for the opportunity to teach in the fall, he had not yet seriously considered college jobs, had only published three poems to date, had no track record to speak of, and had no connections other than a few friends teaching at small universities far from home.

  He came to the nursery where she was working to pick up supplies and saw her moving through the shop, marking materials for her own projects. Her hair then was a deep reddish-brown pulled back behind her head, her skin tanned, her arms and legs well-toned. The shorts she wore were bibbed overalls cut off above the knee. He watched her, as did all the other summer dirt monkeys, each of them young enough to believe in the beauty of their tribe, their hunger howls and hammer hearts and no shame in their desire. They asked her out, laughed and spoke with her while he hung back; shy in the tangle of aisles and dirt and brick and stone he was sent to gather, he loaded his truck, came around each day, and loaded again.

  Cara noticed him, said nothing, waited, found him one day by his truck, his radio playing Richie Havens’ “Freedom,” from Woodstock, loud as he lifted the weight of his supplies. She came over, clipboard in hand, under the pretext of checking his order. “Richie Havens,” she said and stopped to listen. They spoke then and she asked why he never spoke with her before. He said, “You always seemed busy.”

  He came back after work, stained with sweat and nervous. They went for a drink. The next night, cleaned up, they went to dinner, and went to his apartment where they lay on his bed and spoke of poets and gardens. He did not read her any of his poems, but she found a piece of paper with scrawled lines: Here beneath the wet putty stick mortar seal holding me together I pile what comes to my hand coarse brick upon brick not for walls but houses. They ordered a late-night pizza and didn’t leave his room until morning. By the time he started teaching at Benniman they were living together on the bottom floor of a house rented on Charleston. They married the following summer. She was three months pregnant and he was enraptured, learning still the ways to make her happy.

  •

  I drive by their house again the next day. Matt is there this time, waiting for Cara on the stoop out front. I park a safe distance away and watch as she pulls up. He comes from the steps, goes to greet her, kisses her, and carries her bag inside.

  Back home, I take Fred for a walk. The summer heat causes me to sweat. I am jumpy, my novel-in-progress is not in progress at all, it is harder than ever to construct, with each line I write shouting back at me Liar! Liar! Liar! now that I have seen them. What am I to do? Despite what I have witnessed, I refuse to believe they are truly happy, I am certain I have accidentally stumbled into some period of reconciliation, some moment of nostalgia or reprieve that all relationships pass through. The story of my new novel is of a cuckold man hounded by love and so fooled by the vanity of his own convictions that he refuses to believe his wife is unfaithful. His devotion, at first an irritant, slowly becomes accepted, and then embraced by the wife who falls back in love with her husband only at the very moment he has abandoned all hope, resentful of his wife’s past treatment and determined then to leave her.

  Love is at best a fever, a condition ordained by chance and sustained only as long as a white cap wave. Love is as brief as a hiccup, as fragile as a spider’s web, as unreliable as a politician’s pledge, as valueless as a broken molar. This is what I want to write, have tried to write, and what am I to do now that Matt and Cara have thrown everything into chaos?

  Gloria is in the front room as I return, sitting in what has become her favorite chair, the large green cushioned one, which she can fold herself up in and play her guitar. I leave her there and go off to shower. Coming from the bathroom, I walk downstairs naked, and, hoping to divert my thoughts from more serious matters, I say of my ready cock, “Honey, look what I found.”

  Gloria is playing an original tune on her guitar. She stops and stares at me as I appear, shakes her head, and says, “Looks like you missed a spot.”

  “What, this?” I wiggle some more.

  Unimpressed, Gloria asks, “Do you want to fuck me, Eric?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “Did it now?” Gloria finds fault with my approach, says that I’ve been churlish for days, “But now that you’re horny and looking for a place to cook your meat.”

  “Jesus,” I say.

  “It is a religious experience, I know.”

  “Apparently, we have a different opinion about what’s going on here.”

  “You don’t want to fuck?”

  “I do. I didn’t think we were going to have a conversation about it first.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Gloria goes back to playing her guitar.

  I concede, “That may be true.”
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br />   “A little common decency,” Gloria half-sings. “You want to fuck, that’s cool. Just be nice to me.”

  “I am nice.”

  “You’re charitable when you want to be. That doesn’t make you nice.”

  “Okay.”

  “If we’re friends, you need to behave.”

  “We are friends,” I say.

  “As friends, then, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with you the last few days? You’ve been weird, McCanus.” She shifts and uses the neck of her guitar to point at my dick, which has shrunk back down to a soft cheese.

  I start to say it’s nothing, that it’s just my head being in an odd place, my struggling to write and all the rest, but this is common knowledge and Gloria wants to know, “What else?”

  I tell her then about the couple at the market, about Matt and Cara as I haven’t mentioned until now, how they appeared to me and seeing them got me thinking.

  “About what?”

  “About love and happiness.”

  Gloria strums the tune of “Peace, Love, and Happiness” by G. Love and Special Sauce.

  I describe everything in detail, explain how seeing Cara and Matt as they were, as happy together as a Turtles song, rattled me, and that I don’t trust couples who flaunt their happiness in public. Gloria asks how I know Cara and Matt are actually in a long-term relationship and I admit then to having followed them home, to rooting through their mail, and researching them online.

  “McCanus!” Gloria puts her guitar down. Intrigued now, a mischievous girl, she wags her finger and says, “Seriously, Mac? Why would you do that?”

  I’m still standing there naked while Fred the dog lies across the floor, panting from our walk. I answer in terms of my novel and how what I saw at the market tested my perception and screwed up my narrative.

  “And so you stalked them?”

  “I didn’t stalk them.”

  “You followed them home. You rifled through their mail. You researched them online.”

  “I was curious.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you.”

  “You told me what you did. You haven’t told me why.”

  “Didn’t I?” I say again it’s about my book but Gloria doesn’t believe me.

  “This isn’t about your writing,” she says.

  “Sure it is. I can’t write what I don’t believe and I don’t believe what I saw.”

  “But you’re not writing about them. You’re writing about the opposite of them.”

  “Exactly.”

  Gloria shifts in the chair, gives me a look, then asks, “So now what?”

  I answer that there is no now, that I’m done with the couple.

  “So why follow them?”

  “To see.”

  “What?”

  “Who they are.”

  “But you don’t know anything more about who they are now than their names and occupations.”

  I toss my head back and stare at the ceiling as Gloria asks again, “What are you up to, McCanus?”

  I do not answer her question with anything more than what I’ve already said. I do not say that I stalked Matt and Cara because I want to expose the deceit of their happiness, that I followed them home because I need to know what they showed me at the market was fragmentary and not representational because it messes with my understanding of the universe to think of them as actually in love and happy. Instead I say, “Hell,” insist Gloria needn’t be so suspicious and that I’d appreciate her being a bit more sensitive when it’s clear I’m struggling.

  “Poor baby,” Gloria says. “Come here.” Her feet are bare. She removes her shirt, peels off her pants, and tells me to lie on the floor. “Let’s collaborate,” she says.

  Afterward, I go back upstairs, get dressed, and return to my writing room, but the prospect of accomplishing anything more creative today is lost. I come down a short while later. Gloria is in the shower now. I think of the things she said and ask myself as she did, What are you up to, McCanus? The answer I give is not the answer I know to be true. I go to bed early, get up the next morning and walk with Fred, then try again to write. Distracted, unable to think clearly, I grab my keys and wallet, drive to the nursery, and introduce myself to the woman in charge.

  Chapter Three

  Cara jokes with the college boys who work for her as summer hands. They tease her as she tries to lift heavy bags of peat, this before she shows them the strength of experience and uses her legs and hips to toss the bags onto a hand cart, and moves the load out to her truck. Inside again, she checks her messages; she has just returned from a project on the north end of town and will be heading back out shortly when a man in jeans and a dark T-shirt approaches and asks if they might talk.

  •

  We stand between rolls of fencing. Cara is a few inches shorter than me, she is dressed for work in bibbed shorts and Wolverine work boots, her arms and face tan, her hair pulled back, her features large, her cheeks high and round, her eyes green and examining. She’s hurried but polite and listens as I describe my yard and how I want to have the space redone. I have come up with this idea while driving over, a way to get to know her better. I go ahead and say that I’ve a large yard, nearly half an acre of open grounds in back. I ask about the prospect of creating a two-tiered space, with Japanese paving stones, flowering trees and plants. It’s unclear to me what this will look like or cost. I tell Cara that I am getting preliminary estimates and would like her to enter a bid.

  Cara takes me into her office and has me fill out an information sheet. Reviewing the form, it’s unclear whether or not she recognizes my name. She doesn’t ask if I’m that Eric McCanus, explains instead how busy she is and that most of her SunGreen jobs are scheduled weeks in advance. I suggest freelance and that she might consult with me on her own time. She proves scrupulous, says that since I contacted her at SunGreen the project should be maintained as such. I respect her integrity and tell her so. This seems to please her and she promises to stop by my house by the end of the week.

  •

  I spend a few hours at Colossal and return home just after four and walk Fred. Gloria is playing solo at The Curve tonight. When she comes home from work I tell her that I plan on going to her gig. She smiles in a way that lets me know tonight is no good. We circle one another in the front room. I decide not to mention my going to see Cara; I hold off on this as I’m sure Gloria will gloat. I head upstairs, take care of some business, deal with university chores, return a few calls, and come down and eat a turkey sandwich from slices of meat I find in the fridge. Later, after Gloria leaves, I remain restless and decide to go to Caber Hills for a drink.

  It’s almost eight as I reach the restaurant. During our marriage, Lidia worked most evenings and I assume the same is true now. The downstairs dining area has fifteen tables and all are full as I come in. The bar is white and silver, very modern, post-deco with sleek edges and high metal stools. The second floor has an open landing with a private dining room for parties and events. I order two beers at the bar then go upstairs where Lidia keeps her office.

  I’ve been thinking more about Lidia these last few days and this, too, I blame on Matt and Cara. The resolution of our divorce has not entirely quieted the complexity of my feelings, and while our parting remains amicable and we’ve stayed in touch, I’ve yet to fully put my affections to rest. In moments of solitude I sometimes harbor a deep wistful sadness, which threatens to turn into regret. Lidia professes none of the same, regards everything that happened as fodder for moving forward. After our skiing trip, we decided to increase our level of experimentation, convinced such enterprise heightened our passion and intimacy toward one another. As partners, we remained open with our encounters, conjoined in the quest, honest and progressive with our participation. Together we constructed a full philosophy behind our sex, a belief that to experience actual freedom the exercise could not be seized at selfishly but had to be offered as a gift from someone else. My offering to Lidi
a, and Lidia to me, allowed us to be free in ways other couples were not. We tried a few parties, tried a few dates, tried some adlibbed adventures at hotel bars and nightclubs, made one trip to Texas and another to LA. Emancipative, we avoided still any obsession, understood these games were part of a bigger picture, and treated our activities as a hobby—the way other couples took up golf or ballroom dancing all in good fun.

  This was during the time my inability to get a third book started was becoming a problem. Fortunately, things at Colossal were going well. I was working with a handful of bands a month, had a fantastic staff managing and recording a larger stable of musicians, and was making good money without having to break a sweat. Producing songs was more of an organic process for me, while composing a novel required a level of concentration I seemed suddenly to lack. Unable to write anything I thought might eventually be good, I became surly and impatient, which caused Lidia to react in kind. Against our agreement, I slept with other women without my wife’s consent. Lidia would confront me and I would confess, would try and justify, would say it was just an extension of our views though no, of course, I would not want her to do the same, and yes, I was sorry, and no, there was no emotional involvement, it was just sex, just a way to pass an hour and it was wrong of me, I know, and I appreciate ever so much her understanding.

  That she did understand, or was never angry enough to use this as our final straw, was a credit to her. Still we found ourselves adrift, our attention turned inward toward our own work, our own ambitions, and less on our marriage. From this we quarreled incessantly. Where once we were a couple inclined to argue for sport, enjoying the heady back and forth, our words began to sour beneath the point of pleasure and bruise the flesh. Then Lidia had an affair. The affair didn’t last. As arrogant as this sounds, I believe it wasn’t meant to. Lidia and I reconciled. I tried to recover, tried to forgive and be forgiven for my own indiscretions, tried to commit, to move forward and keep to the plan we set out. Lidia, too, was well-intended, and still our effort failed with the ineffectiveness of applying tape to a tear in a vein. Rather than heal together, we carved out a place where we conducted ourselves like two wounded cubs sharing a lair, licking our cuts and bruises until we were slathered completely and could lick no more.