Liars

by Steven Gillis

  “You write,” I say. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Apparently not. Cara thinks my turning down the Zell is about avoidance.”

  “What is it you’re avoiding, exactly? Fame and fortune? These women,” I defend Matt this way, “what is it they want from us? You do good work and you’re an honorable man. Why can’t Cara let you be who you are?” Our food arrives and I dig in ravenously. Fred sits up and I give him a piece of meat. Matt has ordered a turkey club, though he doesn’t seem hungry and picks at the insides. I keep us on point, concentrate on Matt’s dispute with Cara, and say, “If your being content to write your poems and share them as you do is a problem, if this has been brewing between you two before and the Zell brought the issue to a head, well, I am sorry for that Matt, but Cara’s out of line and you have my full support.”

  Matt again thanks me, though being Matt he says, “She isn’t entirely wrong. Maybe if I moved outside my comfort zone better things would happen.”

  “Jesus,” I have him now, I can’t help it, everything continues to be so easy and here I go. “Listen to you. Why should anyone aspire to be less content? You’re happy for fuck’s sake. Isn’t contentment what we all are chasing? Good Christ, what I wouldn’t give for a moment of what you have, to be content and create great work and not forever be chasing my tail. If Cara can’t appreciate what a unique man you are, if this is now a serious dispute, what can you do?”

  “I thought if I could still do the Zell.”

  “That’s impossible, Matt. And why should you do it when you don’t want to?”

  “But I do want to,” Matt says this as if I might still help though I’ve already told him that ship has sailed.

  “What you want,” I say, “is for Cara to understand, but she doesn’t. Obviously this is an issue and I do feel bad for having offered the Zell to you, for my part in all of this, but I must say, Matt, Cara’s position isn’t fair to you.” I present him with a countering example and say, “No one is telling Cara to move on from SunGreen after all these years and work on larger projects. She’s content and why then can’t she let you be, too?”

  Matt is clearly uncomfortable, he is trying to cover for Cara, wanting everything to be as smooth as a freshly laundered sheet. He starts to say again how things are complicated and that truly he and Cara want the same thing, but I stop him, insist that none of what he’s saying suggests Cara wants what he wants, that the situation is unfortunate yet clear now. “Isn’t it? Listen, Matt, I’m no expert and you know this, but from my perspective, for me, Matt, you need to take your position on this seriously. You’re obviously happy with your life and if your wife isn’t receptive, if after all these years you’re finding out she isn’t satisfied and is dismissive of your contentment, well I don’t blame you for being pissed.”

  Fred scoots closer to Matt who still hasn’t eaten much of his sandwich. Matt sighs and tries to address what I’ve just said. “I’m not the one who’s mad,” he tells me. “I don’t want to be mad. If all it takes is my doing the Zell to make Cara happy—”

  “Goddamn it Matt, forget the Zell,” I cut him off. “Why should you have to do what makes you miserable just to please Cara?”

  “Because she’s my wife.”

  “And how is that fair? Look,” I say, “I get you want to make her happy. I understand the theory of necessary adjustments and all, but you can’t be changing what’s fundamentally you to please someone else. That’s crazy. It’s a slow death to you and your relationship.”

  “And yet,” Matt insists, “I want to do it.”

  “Suddenly now?”

  “That’s right.” He reaches for his drink, sad in a way that nearly moves me, and, thinking there is something I might still do to add a further wrinkle to the game in play, I tap the table three times with my middle finger and say, “If that’s really what you want, Matt, if you’re so concerned with Cara, I have an idea. I have something that just might help.”

  •

  Cara and her crew are gone by the time I get home. The excavating of the yard is finished and half the hill is complete. The bi-level slope is taking shape, the stone steps down, and borders where the crushed rock path will be laid out. I survey the yard then go inside with Fred, find the two books of Matt’s poetry I purchased, and begin leafing through. My idea is simple, my intent a little more complicated. Now that Cara and Matt have begun to bicker, I’m curious to see how hard I need to hit the wedge in order for the wood to split. If Cara remains at the heart of Matt’s concerns, if he fears his position on the Zell has caused her to detach from him in ways he can’t endure, how will he fix things? How indeed. Fix for sure. And what will Cara think then? How confident and completely full of shit I am when I tell Matt I can help.

  I sit with his poetry, read until I find just the right poem. Given Matt’s knack for writing visually lyrical rhythms, a sort of Meg Myers meets Townes Van Zandt keen wound howling, I’m sure I will come up with something. The beat of Matt’s writing, his material hovering between hope and longing, affection and despair, makes his poetry prime for song. I anticipate having to restructure his work a bit, loop around and repeat select lines to create a chorus, identify the hook within the meat of Matt’s prose, though essentially the lyrics will be his. The process should be easy once I find the right poem. From there I will call Gloria. Three birds with one stone. There are possibilities within the possibilities and I consider all.

  After an hour, I narrow the prospects down to two pieces. I call Gloria but her phone goes right to voicemail. I wonder if she is playing tonight. I have not heard from her since she moved out. In the time she’s been gone I’ve thought of her more than I like. It has occurred to me that this is what she wants, that her leaving makes the absence in my heart grow fonder. Whether or not I am right about this or merely imagining Gloria’s strategy, I can’t be sure. I want to believe she still cares for me and, clever as she is, knows missing her challenges my fortress walls.

  I leave a message on her phone then turn my attention back to Matt’s poems, review the work I’ve selected, and get to crafting them into lyrical form. My favorite begins: I am pitched in the mooring of your morning after the shape of things in the bedsheet draw without you now offering what is to come. I am left In the sun day’s paper left in the toss of stories spread out in the soft light fading on my floor. I wait for your return.

  I type out the piece in total and send it to Gloria in a text.

  •

  The next morning, Cara comes while I am writing and rings the bell. As a rule I do not respond to this sort of interruption, but hearing Cara’s truck pull into the drive, having not called her back last night, I’m curious to know what’s on her mind. Hitting save on my computer, I come downstairs.

  Before Cara arrived, I had just written a scene in which the Cara in my novel is “on hands and knees, casting rows carved and dug in the earth, alstroemeria, aster and catmint, ruby star and mango punch. She knows how to coax them, to work the dirt as if in prayer. She supplicates and teases. Through the spring she plants, through the summer she tends, sets back the leaves and brush in the fall, lays out plans in the winter, prepares herself for the chill season when all things refuse to flower, though it is in the same dark earth that the cycle began not so long before.” I think of this as I open the door.

  Cara is dressed more or less as always, in work shirt and shorts, brown boots laced, her hair pulled back away from her face. Something, however, is different. I’ve not seen her with makeup ever during her workdays, but here her eyes are lined just enough to accent the green and give her gaze a fullness. I step back and invite her inside. She stands on the porch and removes her boots. I am about to say she doesn’t have to but catch myself and let her take them off.

  Her socks are white against the tan of her calf. We go into the front room and sit in the two chairs. I apologize for not getting back to her after we texted and had said we could possibly talk later, “But then the day got away from me.”
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  “You were with Matt,” she says.

  “I was for a bit,” I reply. “He called about the Zell.”

  “I know.”

  “He truly regrets.”

  “Yes. I’m aware.”

  “It’s hard on him,” I set our conversation this way and confide, “Your disappointment has him worried, not that he doesn’t deserve you being pissed. We spoke about this. I understand your side. It’s unfortunate Matt can’t do more with his work, but people are who they are.” I am trying to construct just the right tone, mindful of my delivery, and I do not yet mention anything about hoping to use one of Matt’s poems in a song, leave that little secret for now as I say, “Matt has a narrower view than you. He gets overwhelmed and can only handle so much. He’s a hell of a writer. I like him, but I get why you’re mad. It’s understandable. It’s frustrating.”

  Cara doesn’t reply to this but says instead, “I just want to let you know I won’t be working on your garden after today. Everything here is under control. You’re in good hands.”

  “You’re leaving me?” I respond this way and with some surprise.

  Cara tells me it’s for the best, that she has other projects that need her attention. I protest and say if she is more comfortable leaving I understand, but that I was expecting her to finish what we started. Again my statement is meant to draw her out and here she repeats, “You’ll be fine.”

  I press for more and ask, “Is this because of what happened in the kitchen?”

  Cara can’t quite control her expression even as she answers, “Nothing happened in the kitchen.”

  “And yet here you are.” I look at her and go, “I like your eyes.”

  “Stop.”

  “You’re wearing shadow.”

  “I didn’t come to talk about this.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  She starts to get up but I raise my hands and say, “Okay,” and ask her, “Tell me what you came to talk about, then.”

  “I already have. I want you to know I won’t be around after today. If you have any questions—”

  “Can I call you?”

  “About the yard.”

  “All right.” I accept her decision and leave things there while bringing us back around to Matt. Cara doesn’t want to talk about Matt anymore however and says, “We are fine.”

  “You and Matt? Good. I’m glad to hear.” I wait just long enough, allow Cara the chance to leave if she chooses. When she doesn’t, I go for broke and say, “I did however see the way you looked at dinner when Matt went on too long about love as the glory prize. I know what you were thinking. It’s harder than that, isn’t it?”

  “Just stop.”

  “All the best intentions and still we’re human. How long can we desire one thing before effort and disappointment wear us down and all the adjustments we make become tantamount to putting grease on stripped gears?”

  “I’m not going to listen to this.”

  “Then go.”

  “I love Matt.”

  “I’m sure you do. He’s your husband and for how long now? Twenty years. I don’t see how you do it. I mean, love, yes. But the things that happen over twenty years, the way things change and how steadfast you are. It’s commendable.” The word sounds cold and isn’t lost on Cara. I sigh tellingly and speak again of Matt. “I know you’re frustrated with him and wondering where all of what’s happening now will lead.”

  “It’s not going to lead anywhere.”

  “But it has to, doesn’t it? I mean something’s going to happen one way or the other.”

  “You’re wrong,” she tells me.

  “Am I? About what?”

  “Everything. All of this.”

  “What this?”

  “I know what you’re doing.” She is sitting quite still in the chair, barely moving at all.

  I wait for her to say more, but instead she remains silent, she appears to be waiting for me. I don’t disappoint; I go ahead and remind her of our discussion at lunch, how I understand and respect her commitment, her defense of marriage as a grand experience, though for me, from the outside now, the whole thing looks like a tug on the water drawing flatbed loads down the shore by sheer endurance. This is my interpretation of marriage for Cara, and to this I add, “I know it’s all about going the distance and committing to necessary adjustments, but what if the adjusting winds up as more sacrifice than intended? What if we wake up one day and realize the adjustments we made weren’t done for love at all? What if we were simply looking for a rapprochement to sustain what we have even when what we have is no longer what we want? What if our relationship has become a convenience, if we’re carrying on out of stubbornness because we’d rather stay than risk leaving? What if we’re so determined to love that we forget what love is?”

  Cara insults me here, says that I am just looking to cause trouble. She is right, of course, but I don’t say this, not exactly, though I do ask, “What about desire? What about accepting that after twenty years things change?”

  Cara does get up now, though I stop her from leaving by speaking about the trajectory of love, the passion that burns at first like a rage, consumptive in its heat, and how, in time, the blaze requires more tinder and brittle sticks to keep even the slightest heat coming from the flame. “Here we are in middle age,” I say, “in the patch of time that passes so quickly we barely notice when the itch arrives and in a fury of unanticipated doubt, the reckoning begins. What we want then is our release, to feel again as we once did, and we wonder when that chance arrives if we are brave enough to take it, to know with a pulsating certainty we should, and wait to see what will happen next.” This is what I’m curious about and say to Cara, “This is what you’re feeling now.”

  I consider speaking again of Matt’s deficiencies, addressing Cara’s strengths, and how what once worked well for them was bent beyond repair. I could say all this and more but it seems nothing else is required, and so I skip the rest and come from my chair, lean in toward Cara, and kiss her deeply.

  In the affairs I’ve had, in these first moments, I nearly always find the eagerness of surrender comes as a relief. Whatever gamesmanship came before has ended and allows for willing participation, a collapse into warm waters, which no longer terrifies but is entered readily and eagerly. There is nothing different this time. Together we enter, curl and embrace, take ourselves up the stairs, into the bedroom where, fully immersed, rejecting all pause or reflection, we fall into bed, peel away our clothes, and become the measure of our want in the way hunger takes hold and overwhelms all else.

  Afterward we say nothing. This is not surprising. There is for now nothing to be said. I wait until Cara gets up and dresses before getting out of bed myself. By the time I have showered and returned to work, Cara is out in the yard. I see her from my window, a shovel in her hand, standing on the edge, digging down in the soil in order to create impressions to set the stone.

  Chapter Twelve

  How strange, but as he’s lifting weights this morning, repping what has always been a manageable heft, pushing through a series of eight, the burn that comes is suddenly filled with the most peculiar pain inside his chest, not so much a hot flash bolt but bleak and hollow as a wind through tightly closed shutters. On his back he struggles to complete the set.

  •

  Gloria calls as I’m feeding Fred. It’s already after three and I’ve just finished writing. I usually don’t write so late, but sleeping with Cara has inspired me and I have no trouble transitioning back to work. This is not callous, it’s what I do. My writing is an exploration of the story unfolding, and finally now I have the narrative taking shape. I don’t sensationalize our sex but examine it for what it was, and is. I look to identify the consequence and anticipate the collateral damage. That I am the root of the damage is irrelevant in terms of my story and by that I mean the one I’m writing.

  Gloria sounds good. “You sound good,” I say and too soon go, “I miss you.”

  To th
is she replies that she may have left a shoe in the closet and when I get a chance she’d like me to check. I tell her that she should come have a look for herself. Gloria ignores this and asks about the text I sent. I explain how the verse is from Matt, that since turning down the Zell he’s become desperate to make things right with Cara. “I’m thinking,” I say, “if we can present some of Matt’s poems to a new audience through song this might work.”

  The idea sounds phantasmic when I say it out loud and yet I go ahead and ask Gloria to help. I’ve not considered rescinding my offer to Matt even after sleeping with Cara; I am actually more intrigued than ever to see what comes of things now, and as the situation is set up to bring me close again to Gloria, I ask her once more to, “Say yes. I know you write your own lyrics, but this is a unique opportunity that could work for everyone.” I tell her if she can come up with a tune using Matt’s poem that I promise to take the piece along with some of her other originals and pass them on to people I know in the business.

  Gloria doesn’t answer right away. I picture her on the other end, sitting with her legs folded in some large cushioned chair no longer mine, or maybe in bed with her new lover. I see her and wait for her reply. I am sure she’s thinking to ask what it is I’m actually up to, or how I never managed to get any of my contacts to bite on her music before. Instead, she finally goes, “Sure, Eric. I’ll come up with something and give you a call.”

  I thank her at once and start to say maybe we can meet and discuss, go to Colossal and work up the tune together, but before I can get the words out Gloria has already said goodbye and clicked off the line.

  •

  Late that afternoon, Matt waits for Cara to come home, first inside preparing their dinner and then out on the porch. He is on the porch as she pulls into the drive with her window down. Seeing him, she rolls the window up. The forecast for this evening is rain. The forecast starts with clouds.