Liars

by Steven Gillis

  •

  Tonight there is a group inside the private dining area of Caber Hills talking and laughing loudly. Lidia’s office is a small space farther back. Her door is locked and I can see through the glass that her light is off. Disappointed, I call her cell and say, “Hey,” when she answers.

  “Hey, stranger.” Lidia is friendly with me, less inclined to be confused by the circumstance of our divorce, and has allowed us to remain close. I ask how she’s doing, tell her where I am, that I’m actually at the restaurant now. “Outside your office,” I say, “with two beers in hand. I came by for us to have a drink though it seems we missed one another.” I ask for news, tell her about my plans for a garden and how I’m looking to reconfigure the yard, which I hope she will like. Lidia says she’s sure she will like it fine, then adds that her opinion doesn’t matter as the garden belongs to me now, the house too, the deal we made when we divorced as Lidia wanted to move downtown.

  “All the same,” I do not tell her about Cara and Matt, say instead that I imagined the new landscape with her in mind.

  Lidia doesn’t bite; she asks about Gloria instead. I say she’s good and ask about the sous chef she’s seeing, and Lidia says, “He’s a sous chef,” and we laugh at this. I do not talk more about Gloria, do not mention anything about my writing or why again it has stalled, I am feeling something else, a need to tell Lidia that I still love her. Whether or not I do still love her is something else again, is a new thing to blame on Matt and Cara, and hedging I say, “I miss you.”

  “You missed me already,” Lidia in reply.

  “Either way, I think we should get back together.”

  “All right. I’ll be right over.”

  “I’m serious,” I tell her.

  “No you’re not. And no you don’t.”

  I already regret saying this much, modify my claim and confess to feeling nostalgic, to missing our late nights hanging out at Caber Hills. Lidia responds with a sing-song repeat of my name. “Eric, Eric, Eric.” Since leaving me, since our divorce, we haven’t slept together, we have done nothing more than talk, though when I get to chattering on this way Lidia knows, the insinuation clear, she says that I should let the moment pass.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I do, it’s true. I stop then, and when Lidia admits it’s nice that I came by but we should leave things as they are I decide not to press, have learned at least this, to not always react through a prism of old wounds. “Okay,” I say. We chat a minute more then click off the line as Lidia goes back to whatever she was doing before I called.

  •

  I walk from Lidia’s office toward the stairs, past the private dining room where one of the revelers recognizes me and calls out, “Professor McCanus.” He’s a skinny bean, all arms and legs, his suit silver, his hair cut neatly, moussed and made to stand in a way that doesn’t quite work and yet is expensively styled and oddly perfect. I don’t place him at first. He says my name again, calls out, “McCanus,” reminds me who he is and invites me into the party.

  I’m introduced to the rest of the room as the author of Kilwater Speaks and instantly everyone applauds. Being cheered for a book I wrote years ago is an odd little nut. I try repaying the compliment just the same, understand the expectations of my minor fame, and look to offer something clever, a witticism as is anticipated from a once-lauded author. Failing at this, I remain another few minutes, talk among those gathered, drink one of my beers, and hand off the other before making my exit while saying, “Cheers, folks. I hope you enjoyed the bar mitzvah.” I’ve no idea what this means but everyone laughs.

  I go back down to the bar, sit for a time, and try to decide what to do with the rest of my night. I’m imagining Gloria at her gig when I see two people from the party coming down the stairs. A man and woman, she in a lime-colored chiffon dress, sleeveless with the hem cut above the knee, and he in a gray silk suit, white shirt, and yellow tie drawn up tight to his neck. The woman has long black hair, is quite beautiful, Asian American, slender framed with a silhouette of curves. She descends the stairs in front of the man, swats at his hand each time he reaches for her.

  I watch them pass through the restaurant and head outside where they stop and argue in front of the window. He seems to be entreating her while she keeps her hands moving as if her fingers are on fire. He straightens his shoulders, turns his frame into an exclamation point. As he does so, she gives her head a shake and points for him to go.

  Once he disappears she comes back into the restaurant where, spotting me at the bar, she takes the seat next to me and orders a drink. “You saw that?”

  “No,” I answer.

  “Liar,” the woman smiles, and I see she has impressively white teeth. Of the man outside she says, “Some people are just manuke. You know manuke?”

  “I assume it doesn’t mean warm and cuddly.”

  She laughs at this, explains how the man had waited until they were out with friends to tell her that he’s been offered a job in LA. “He expects me to be happy.”

  “For him?”

  “For us. He wants me to go with him, expects me to just pick up and go.”

  “And you don’t want to go?”

  “Of course I don’t want to go. Mostly though I don’t like being told I should want to go and being blindsided by the whole thing.”

  “Right.” I check her ring finger, see that she is married, and suspect her reaction to her husband’s news is more complicated than simply not wanting to move. In this sort of discord there tends to be larger issues at play. She samples her drink then says in reference to meeting me upstairs, “You’re probably enjoying this. All you writers love the drama.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” I reply. “I enjoy writing about the drama but watching it for real is a more perverse pleasure.”

  This time when she laughs she touches my wrist. Her drink has a lime to match her dress. She empties her glass. I offer to buy her another, signal the bartender, and get two of the same. I think about Lidia and the friability of marriage, how ridiculous it is for me to be flirting here in Lidia’s restaurant, and yet I am living now with Gloria and Lidia’s reaction doesn’t matter should she somehow hear of me at the bar. I say to the woman, “You don’t have to tell me about your marriage.” I find the best devise for getting people to talk is to come at things sideways and make it seem I have no real interest. “Your situation is private. We all have our issues.”

  “But that’s the thing.” She thanks me for the fresh drink, squeezes her lime, explains to me about the man with whom she was quarrelling, “He’s not my husband.”

  “Well now.” Who can guess these things? I lean closer and say, “So you’re deciding whether or not to leave your husband for this other guy?”

  Again she looks at me in a way I don’t expect, as if I have said something stupid, her face pinched as she answers, “Why would I do that?”

  “Because your boyfriend is leaving, because he asked you to go with him.”

  “And you think that’s why I’m upset?”

  “I think his asking has thrown a wrench into your perfect world.”

  She nods her head, holds her glass out for me to click my drink against. The second drink, on top of whatever she had upstairs, has her slightly drunk and from this she tells me, “I’m upset because he never should have asked me.”

  “Ahh.”

  “Lovers, right?”

  “Manuke.”

  “Exactly. They’re so presumptuous.”

  “You’d think they’d know their place.”

  “What about having an affair suggests I want a relationship?”

  Oh this woman. I have my hand nearly on her leg now as I answer, “It suggests the opposite.”

  “It screams the opposite.”

  “You agree to a casual bump and tug.”

  “And the next thing you know they expect you to move across the country with them.”

  “I
t’s crazy.”

  “I am married.” She runs the edge of her glass across her lower lip.

  I go ahead and tell her about the circumstance of my marriage and my current living arrangement, all of which she seems pleased to learn and says, “Then you understand.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “So.” She puts her glass back on the bar, slides her knee next to mine, and with a conspiratorial invite asks, “Are we going to talk all night or what?”

  Chapter Four

  Three days later, Cara calls my cell. It’s late afternoon and I’m coming from a meeting at the university. As part of my duties, as I teach very little these days, I agreed to sit on committees. Four years ago our department received a grant from the Zell Foundation and today we spent a few hours going over a list of this year’s candidates to invite for readings.

  Cara says she can meet me at my place at five. I nearly tell her that I changed my mind, that the project is a bit too big for me to take on this summer and perhaps next year is better. This seems reasonable, but then reasonableness is not much involved with what I’m doing lately. In the last few days, I have continued to carve out a plot, have come up with a way to ingratiate myself further, to see if I can’t be introduced to both Cara and Matt and from there view them close-up together. My desire to see them interacting in conversation and not simply walking through the market is important, I tell myself, in order to better observe the fissures in their relationship, the cracks, as it were, into which I might stick my fingers and agitate a bit.

  Gloria is out when I get home. I go upstairs and retrieve one of Matt’s poetry collections, bring it down, and put it on the kitchen table. After this, I go out front and wait. Cara pulls up promptly at five and I walk her around the backyard where we spend half an hour discussing the project. I find her easy to talk with, intelligent and creative, confident and professional with an ability to take my crude ideas and make sense of them. She gives me prices to review, a timeframe to consider, and offers to draw up a detailed plan for a hundred dollars, which I will own even if I decide not to use her going forward. I agree to this, insist on writing her a check in good faith. We head inside where Cara notices the book by Matt on the kitchen table. I give her a moment then ask, “Do you know him?”

  As they have different last names there’s no way to suspect I’ve any knowledge, and then she tells me, “He’s my husband.”

  I react with tremendous surprise. “Well now, well now,” I exclaim. “Small world. Isn’t that something? What a talented couple.” I comment further, say how brilliant I find Matt’s work, go ahead and quote the few lines I have purposely memorized from Matt’s book. Cara’s impressed, appreciates this, and when I say that a poet of Matt’s obvious talent should be a beacon blazing across the scene, Cara replies with the slightest of shrugs, just enough for me to notice as she answers that Matt follows his own drummer beat and isn’t very good at self-promotion.

  I say that I am certain for Matt it’s only a matter of time, and of course I would be happy to help, and here Cara surprises me in turn, reaches somewhat sheepishly into the knit satchel she carries and pulls out a copy of Kilwater Speaks. “I haven’t read it,” she admits. “But Matt’s a fan.” It seems she has mentioned my name to her husband, and asks if I’d sign the book, “To Matthew,” she says then changes her mind and has me go with Matt.

  •

  Years from now, I will write:

  In the summer, after Cara has left for SunGreen, and the kids, too, off to their summer jobs, Matt stretches and heads to the high school, where he runs sprints with the boys working out in the offseason with their teams. He joins the soccer team in their fitness drills and lifts weights with the footballers, exposing in the process his physical-self life’s natural dichotomy. He challenges the boys and asks them to consider if the poet-man can run and bench with the best of them, what else might each of them do that they may not have imagined before?

  Back home he showers, eats, and then writes. He is working on the start of a longer poem, something he’s never tried before, book-length if the narrative holds. He starts with: On the fruit tree berries I know the taste and stain if I bite too hard with the front of my teeth. There is this to deal with the permanence of what spills from inside.

  When Cara comes home he takes the book she brought for him, now signed, and examines the signature. The hand is loose and light, the E and the M opening like a bird in flight. She tells him then how she found his own book on the table, and how cool Matt thinks it is that a writer such as Eric McCanus is reading him. How flattering to be sure. She watches him holding the book like a prize, sees how happy he is and how much she wishes he took a similar joy in presenting his own work. In all the years they’ve been together, he’s done but a handful of readings, hides from the invitations he receives, prizes and letters from other poets applauding his work. Somehow he is opposed to this, his ambition limited to the process of putting words on the page, as if doing more involves a vanity he refuses to possess.

  She believes differently; she subscribes to the necessity of assertion and wishes he would champion his work and demand the world take note. How is it he can be so content to write as long and as well as he does with such little attention? Happiness has an odd effect on him, makes him tranquil and merrily resigned and he agrees, says he is happy and content with his life. She respects his ease and egoless manner, and yet sometimes she thinks his attitude is wearisome and an excuse to not challenge himself further. Other men don’t do this, she thinks. Other men know better.

  He is about to put the signed Kilwater Speaks up on the shelf when she stops him, tells him to wait, “I want to read it.”

  •

  The next time Cara phones, I’m on my way to Colossal. She has completed a preliminary draft of the work I described for my yard and wants to show me. I say that I can stop by SunGreen if that’s convenient. She is leaving shortly for a jobsite, however, so I propose meeting for lunch tomorrow. Cara suggests the Landmark Café. I agree and say, “It’s a date.”

  As a gesture, during the meeting at my house, I give Cara the copy of Matt’s book for him to sign. The act is intended to ingratiate myself further as I hardly care about the signature. At lunch Cara presents me with Matt’s book. I act well pleased, examine the signed page, the design of the M and the G given a tight cursive set on the title page. “How wonderful,” I say. “How generous.”

  Cara wears a clean sweatshirt over her work clothes, her hair brushed back, her face and hands washed clean of the morning’s project. We don’t talk about the garden right away, speak of other things first. I ask and Cara tells me about her family, her son Eli, Defender of Man, and daughter Lia, Bearer of Good News. She liked the names, she says, even before knowing their meaning. I tell her that I don’t have kids, that it is something I think about from time to time and have actually once put a great deal of effort into pursuing. She finds this funny, and I smile.

  The plans for the yard are sketched across several large sheets of drafting paper, rolled up and held together by a thick elastic band. Cara unrolls the sheets across the table and shows me her design. Her handiwork is impressive, containing all the details as we had earlier discussed. I listen while she explains what I am seeing. The final page is an elaborate computerized rendering of what the project will look like when complete. “It’s quite beautiful,” I say and then confide about the garden, “It’s for my girlfriend. And my wife. My ex-wife. It’s something I hope they both like.”

  Cara finds the statement strange and I reply, “It’s a strange situation. Honestly, if I invested this much energy trying to make Lidia happy while we were married, who knows?”

  “And your girlfriend?”

  “Yes, well,” I say, “she’s not actually my girlfriend. We’re living together but we’re not really together, if that makes sense. Plus I’m trying hard not to fall in love with her.”

  “You’re living with her but trying not to fall in love?”
/>   “Right.”

  Cara has a soft face, a pillowy full moon, and when not concentrating on work her expression becomes something almost tender. Hoping to further gain her trust, sharing these personal truths, I say of my feelings for Gloria, “I honestly don’t know. I’ve written two books and a bunch of stories and songs, and every relationship in them is just me floundering around trying to figure things out.” I do what I can to make myself sound sincere.

  Cara notices and says, “I saw that in Kilwater. Your characters really do try.”

  “I thought you hadn’t read my book.”

  “I hadn’t before.”

  Our food comes and we eat. I keep our conversation moving in the direction I want, reminding Cara that I wrote Kilwater some time ago. “I think I got lucky. Back then I didn’t know yet what I didn’t know yet.”

  Cara smiles as I say this. Her smile is also warm, not flirtatious, but kind and attentive to what I am saying. “Youth allows us to be fearless,” she says and I agree.

  “In an odd way,” I tell her, “getting older narrows rather than expands our scope, allows experience to chip away at us, forces us emotionally and creatively to feel safer and more content with what we know.” I state this then add, “In terms of art I mean. And love.”