Liars

by Steven Gillis

  Cara says she will have to hear more first because “contentment is a complicated condition. I mean, we seek it and at the same time have to be careful not to become static.”

  “That’s exactly true.” I like the way she is quick to argue. No bullshit with her. I answer that of course she’s right but that “when we’re younger, contentment is the most distant sort of abstraction while experience is something we acquire but don’t yet have. We write from the heart and fall in love the same way. We have no skill or practice so we jump right in and what we produce is raw and honest and sometimes, if we’re lucky, we make it work.”

  I tell her how I miss those days, that I haven’t published a book in years, can barely get my head around what I am trying to create, and I think this was in part because all of my experiences cluttered and clanged against my effort. “If that makes sense. I miss the unknown,” I say. “I need something to get me charged up.”

  “You mean something to believe in?”

  “Believe in. That’s it exactly.” I am pleased to hear her say this. “My problem is my belief system is off. I’ve spent a good long while trying to write what I believe but I’m not convinced anymore that I believe in anything, or more that what I believe isn’t completely wrong, and when I try to explain it in my writing it falls away like so much ash from a smoldering stick. This scares me and is the problem I’ve been having.” I am jumping around a bit with my thoughts, but have in mind a place I want to wind up. I compare writing to marriage, say that in both we start with a narrative in mind, a direction we want to take our story, and then things happen to throw us off. “With a novel, when the writing is going well, I can follow the direction my narrative wants to take me, I can identify the internal needs of the book, the real story, which, should I miss and try to create something else, the entire work will collapse if I don’t see what I’ve done wrong and get back on track.

  “Relationships are the same,” I zero in then. “They have their own internal compass we can’t always control. We may love one another and still make a mess of things, become clumsy or blind, overburdened or complacent in time, develop resentment, suffer through episodes of boredom, indifference, and worse.”

  “But that’s only natural.” Cara takes my comment and goes with it this way. “It’s not that things change but how we deal with them that matters.”

  “You’re right.” I have her talking, and answer, “Dealing with things is key. But dealing with them is different from feeling about them and reacting to them as we once did. Experience teaches us how to accept what we can no longer have. With writing, we develop technique and style, learn how to maneuver our words even when inspiration fails us. We forget how we were able to approach the blank page with nothing but desire and come instead to rely on a more tempered talent. With relationships,” I continue, “we do the same, we learn how to manage one another long after we can no longer remember how or why we fell in love.”

  “That’s too harsh.” She wastes no time challenging my claims. “All relationships require the necessity of adjustment.”

  “Require, sure,” I repeat the phrase then ask, “but aren’t the adjustments we make an acknowledgment that something’s wrong? As we get older we become more adept at self-delusion. If you think about it, the best thing experience does is teach us how to perform emotional sleight of hand.”

  “Now I know you’re kidding.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Then you’re a cynic.”

  “Am I?” I haven’t realized fast enough that I am actually making her mad, and still I say, “I’m sure there are things about Matt that disappoint you.”

  “Experience is a gift.” She ignores my comment, is defensive here, and replies, “Nothing stays the same. As a writer, you can’t write the same way now as you did when you were twenty-five and no one would want you to. It wouldn’t be honest. I think it’s the same thing with relationships. Experience lets us know we love someone. The fact that things change is not always a bad thing. Adjusting to change requires acceptance not self-delusion. That relationships go through permutations allows us to change together and through that change become closer.” She ends this way, picks up her BLT, and asks, “But how did we get on this?”

  “You read my book.”

  She gives a nod, her head tipping just an inch or so to the side as she teases, “That was my mistake.”

  “Yes,” I smile again, different than before, and tell her, “It definitely was.”

  Chapter Five

  After lunch I go to Colossal where I have a session scheduled with a band called Render to Caesar (RTC). RTC is four guys with a loose Blind-Melon-meets-R.E.M. sound they can’t quite bring together. It’s easy to apply a conventional fix and call it a day, but instead I tell the band to take the song they’ve brought me and riff on it. “Let’s go off the edges,” I say. “Give me some Wilco, give me some Allman Brothers, some Dave Matthews when he really lets go. I don’t want any Goddamn Dead,” I say, “but wouldn’t mind if you want to work in some Phish.” After all these years I have no technical way of explaining what I want any better than this. Occasionally I will play my guitar, or piano, but I am only a marginal musician and am better at using my words. My routine has not changed much over the years. I stand with my back turned as the band plays, and when I like what I hear I give further instruction.

  Frankie, our engineer, records the session so we have something to play back. I tweak the chorus, move the vocals, demonstrate where verses should appear, and show how to stretch the instrumentation. The singer’s a beast and I intend to use his voice as a tease throughout, make listeners anticipate the lyric’s return. We spend four hours expanding a three-minute song into a seven-minute-and-thirty-second anthem. The band soars, demonstrates a greater command of their gifts when allowed to play without constraint. Now trusting and willing to follow me, we create a one-off piece I expect will surprise Geffen Records, which has RTC under contract; the tune is four minutes too long to get radio play anywhere other than the alt college stations and late-night FM feeds, and still when we finish the band is ecstatic and knows exactly what we have made.

  After high fives and a few shots of WhistlePig to celebrate, I head home. Gloria is watching TV in the front room. On the screen is one of those ubiquitous cop shows where good-looking thirty-somethings solve matters of espionage all over the globe. Here I see a couple wearing evening dress being chased down a beach in what appears to be Morocco. “Which one are you watching?” I ask.

  Gloria replies, “I’m not sure.”

  She has worked a shift at Danny’s and has no plans for tonight. I tell her about my session with RTC and then about my lunch with Cara. Gloria knows now that I’ve been in touch with Cara, has given me grief about the garden, is amused by my persistence, and says, “I want to meet them.”

  I laugh at the idea. Gloria mutes the TV, turns in her chair and asks, “What’s so funny?”

  I answer, “I don’t think Cara and Matt will know what to make of you.”

  “There’s nothing to make.”

  “Yeah, well I’m sure you’ll meet Cara when she starts in on the yard.”

  “Did you tell her about me?” Gloria asks.

  I answer, “Yes.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that we are living together but not in a relationship. I told her I was having the garden made for you and for Lidia.”

  “You told her the garden was for both of us?”

  “I explained the situation.”

  Gloria points at my head and says, “The situation is all in there, McCanus.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “And are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Having the garden made for me and Lidia?”

  “Sure. Yes, I am.” I would like to think Gloria would prefer I hadn’t included Lidia in my story but more probably she doesn’t really care. Gloria never minds when I talk about Lidia. She doesn’t complain when I tell
her about other women. I have told her about the woman at the bar and this was fine. Our relationship, such as it is, relies on equanimity and causing no harm. Here, however, she seems to be egging me on, wants to know what good a garden is to Lidia when she no longer lives here?

  I reply, “Some connections run deep forever, no matter, you know?”

  Gloria stares at me now as if my answer’s all wrong and there’s something else she wants to say. She is wearing the cut-off sweats she likes to sleep in, a sleeveless top, her hair finger-brushed up. I let her stare then finally say, “What?”

  She sighs and goes, “Nothing,” clicks off the TV and leaves the room. I get something to eat from the kitchen, then go upstairs and fall asleep in the guest room. Gloria doesn’t come get me. At some point I wake with a start, try and place where I am, and find myself breathing hard in a state of near hyperventilation as I can’t quite be sure if I’ve been dreaming or whether I did in fact just tell Gloria that I love her. Hell. Hell. Of course not, McCanus. What foolish things come into my head when I least expect them.

  •

  The next morning I write:

  Together they sit in the front room and watch a program on TV. The actors are handsome, B-list performers, as interchangeable as dress socks. The show presents the couple in dinner attire, carrying out some sort of skullduggery before being chased down a beach. After a time, Cara gets up and moves to the couch, lies down and thinks about her lunch with McCanus. She recalls her reaction to reading Kilwater Speaks, how she found the characters in the novel filled with an unrelenting, bumble-footed energy, a flaunting of the human spirit as a way of saying, Hell yes I’m alive and what of it?

  All of this is different from Matt’s poems, which are more mellifluous in their offering. If she had to point to something that has worn thin for her in Matt’s work, if she were forced to do so, it would be the consistent way his voice contained a sense of mournful cheer, as if finding the beauty in the struggle was life’s single most important calling rather than embracing beauty and being sorry separately for what they truly were.

  She closes her eyes on the couch. He lets her sleep a bit before waking her. While she sleeps, he reads. When she wakes, she thanks him for letting her rest. He goes back to his book, catches her once and then again staring at him. “What?” he finally asks.

  “Nothing,” she answers.

  He interprets this all wrong, tells her then, “I love you.”

  She smiles as she must and says, “What things come into your head when I least expect them.”

  •

  Two days after our lunch, Cara lets me know she has a better sense of her schedule and anticipates the project in front of mine being completed by the end of the week. She gives me a date she can start on the yard and has already asked me to review the specific plants and trees available for the garden as she needs to order some of the deciduous trees soon. I tell her that I am partial to the cherry and plum mixed with evergreens. “While I have you,” I say. “I’ve been thinking.”

  I take my cell outside and stand on the deck looking at the backyard as Fred runs about. This morning, while I wrote, I decided to rework the start of my novel. I’ve done this now more times than I can count though here, rather than force the issue of love’s insubstantiality, I set the stage differently. Instead of beginning with the husband’s cuckolding, I chose to make the couple unaware of their impending vulnerability, allowing the action to proceed as if by accident, proving through each scene that love is a vagary, as impermanent as a match flame. My intent was to do this not cynically, as Cara accused me at lunch, not with a loutish yowl, but rather with a commiserative approach, which demonstrated a certain sympathy to the inevitability of love’s collapse.

  I ask Cara if she is familiar with the Zell Readings and she says yes. I had hoped for this. The reading series is tremendously popular. I remind her of my position at the university, explain how the Zell provides us with funding to bring writers to campus in order to share their work with an appreciative audience. I let her know the university rarely selects a local writer, that we try and avoid any homegrown prejudice and internal complications, but since Matt isn’t affiliated with the university, since he’s a poet and not a novelist—as novelists are more pissy about such things—as the university hasn’t once had a local author awarded a Zell, and as I’m a fan and my vote carries weight, “I would like to nominate Matt.”

  Cara does not know what to say—she is overwhelmed by my offer. I describe what will happen if Matt is chosen, how he will draw national attention, will receive a stipend, will be brought in to do a few events on campus beyond his reading, class talks and workshops and such. There will be a luncheon and dozens of new reviews as the Zell is quite the prize. “What do you think?” I ask Cara, conspiring to have it seem as though we are deciding together.

  When she replies, “Yes, of course. How wonderful,” I say I should probably speak with Matt as well, get to know him a bit better and would she mind if I give him a call?

  I get Matt’s phone number and put it in my cell. It will take considerable effort on my part to get the committee to sign off on using one of the four yearly stipends for a local poet of no real repute, but for now the outcome is not the issue. “Happy to do it,” I say, “For Matt.”

  Cara thanks me again, and does as I hoped she might: invites me to dinner. I remain eager to see them in their natural habitat, to visit with them more intimately at their home and I accept her invitation at once.

  •

  I call Matt that evening. Now that we have exchanged signed copies of our books, I speak to him chummily, carrying on as if we’re old friends. I flatter him as I explain about the Zell, fill him in as Cara has waited for me to break the news. Startled, he goes quiet, knows of course about the Zell and its authors and says of my nominating him, “It’s very kind of you.”

  I hesitate just half a beat before replying, “Really, Matt, it isn’t.”

  •

  The next day I leave Colossal by five, stop on my way home to purchase a bottle of Dewar’s, then wash up and change my shirt. Gloria is heading out to play music with friends. When I tell her about my plans for the evening she follows me upstairs, stands in the doorway, and asks, “What are you up to, McCanus?”

  The walls of my bedroom are painted an off shade of green. A fresh coat was added just before Lidia and I separated, as she felt we needed. I answer Gloria by insisting it’s only a dinner, though when questioned as to what prompted the invitation I tell her about the Zell. Gloria tips herself back from the shoulders as if my news requires more room for her to take in. She walks to my closet, nixes the shirt I have chosen, and selects another. “So let’s see,” she says, “you’ve hired Cara to build a garden and now you’re getting her husband a Zell, but you’re not up to anything?”

  “Nope.” I change my shirt again and do not attempt to explain, I know better than to say Matt’s poems inspired me and that my gesture’s sincere.

  Gloria stands in front of me and fixes the collar on my shirt. Her hair is longer than it was when we first met, the coloring a half-shade lighter, she wears it today pulled into a puff at the back of her head. After eight months I am fully aware that Gloria is smarter than me about most things, and still I refuse to take her seriously as she cautions me and says, “You know this is going to end badly, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know that. And there is no this.”

  She slides her hands down my arms and steps away to look at me. I have brushed my hair and put on the blue shirt Gloria’s chosen. On the underside of Gloria’s right arm she has tattooed in black ink the phrase: The map is not the territory. I like that she has inked this there, find the tattoo sexy. For a moment I want to kiss her, am close enough to do so—proximity always significant for me. I button my shirt as Gloria watches. Shaking her head, she says in summary, “You’re not going to learn anything about their marriage by screwing with them. There isn’t a relationship in the world that can
’t be fucked with.”

  This is true, I suppose, and still I continue to claim, “I’m not up to anything. I’m getting to know them is all. That’s the worst you can accuse me of.”

  Gloria goes again to my closet. I’ve carved out space for her, given her a handful of hangers, a shelf, and two drawers in my bureau. She changes her clothes, pulls off her T-shirt and jeans, selects a light summer dress, an off shade of orange, and slips it on like a fresh skin and frees her hair. I watch her dress; I think at first she is changing in order to have me take her to dinner, though seeing my concern she tells me not to worry. “I told you, I’m playing with friends tonight.” She smiles at this, a half-tick ahead of me before she says, “You, too, it seems, McCanus.”

  •

  In the bedroom, I write:

  He watches her dress. Downstairs the table is set, the salad made, the water for the corn placed to boil, the chicken and potatoes put in the oven. She undresses and dresses again. He witnesses each transformation. The walls of their bedroom are jade, in need of fresh paint. He hasn’t noticed this before now. He wears a tan shirt with rolled-up sleeves, wants to remain in shorts but she has him put on a pair of slacks instead. He stands in the center of the room and she fixes his collar. As a caution, as she can’t help, excited as she is, looking forward to the evening, she reminds him of the opportunity presented. He is aware, but prefers not to take things as seriously, he is less anxious than she, the stakes not so much a concern for him. He answers this way, jokes about the fortuity of chance encounters, then tells her not to worry and what’s the worst that can happen?

  •

  I park on the street, forget the Dewar’s, and have to go back to my car. Matt opens the front door as I’m coming up the walk and we shake hands. He is shorter than me by an inch or so, is casually dressed in slacks and a shirt, somewhat more preppy than as I saw him before at the market. For no reason I slap his shoulder. Although we are roughly the same age I say, “Matthew, my boy,” and present him with the whiskey.