“Fair enough.” I don’t tell her about Lidia, I don’t want to complicate things more, and ask instead what she thinks of the new poems I sent. “They’re great, aren’t they?” I fill my voice with a level of enthusiasm meant to demonstrate that I am all about the project and over our baby talk.
Gloria says she is reviewing the poems now, and that she’d like to choose the musicians who play on the demo, as she wants to get her friends a few extra bucks. I ask who she has in mind and when she tells me I say sure. I invite Gloria to join me for a drink, to talk about the poems I say, but she doesn’t bite, cautions me to drive safe, to go easy on the booze, and that she’ll see me tomorrow.
•
Cara phones not two minutes later. I hold the phone hard against my ear and listen as she says she needs to see me. I tell her that’s impossible. “Tonight’s no good,” I confide and mean this in more ways than one.
“It’s important,” she insists, and does not add please, not yet ready to plead though she is close. Despite myself, I can’t help but feel for her. I recall a time when Lidia and I were on the outs and I had an affair with a woman named Marcela Stern. Marcela was a community outreach administrator with a husband and child of her own. Despite my making clear our affair was a casual thing, Marcela began calling me and asking when we might get together, professing her affection beyond all point of reason and turning desperate when I put her off. For a month or more I tried to maintain my distance, even as we were fucking, but slowly Marcela’s persistence began to wear me down. Just as I was starting to wonder if I might have feelings for Marcela after all, I happened to spot her by chance on the street, walking down Harden Avenue, her coat misbuttoned and her hair wild. She carried a shopping bag under one arm and strode hurriedly like a toy soldier with no sway or jiggle in her hips. I realized at once how pity was not the same as affection, and after one final fuck during which I kept my boots on and was distracted by the smell of peppermint on Marcela’s tongue, I quit the affair and came to terms with my divorce.
Cara says she’s sorry for shouting at me this morning. She understands that I have sympathy for Matt and that this is one of the things she loves about me.
As I am drunk and suffering the effects still of Lidia’s news and Gloria’s continued distance, as my head is swimming in rye and I am pondering my next move on a dozen different fronts, it’s hard for me not to burst out laughing at Cara, and it’s equally hard not to snap back and howl that I don’t have time for this and tell her that a fuck is a fuck is a fuck and should not be construed as anything more than that. Instead, I think of Gloria and Lidia and what a mess I’ve made of things, and, feeling sorry for myself, I announce back into the phone, above the ruckus of the bar, with a combination of empathy and enmity, cruelty mostly, though I pretend it’s not, “I love you, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Hungover, I wake in the guest room again. It’s late for me, after eight in the morning, and Fred is nudging my face. My head feels like the shattered remains of a crushed boulder, while even my breathing is too loud of a sound. I sit up and my equilibrium follows a few seconds later. I walk tentatively and let Fred outside. It takes several minutes more to get back upstairs and into the shower where I stand beneath the tap allowing the warmth of the spray to pass over me until I feel almost human.
Slowly, the pieces from last night come back to me. I remember Cara arriving at the bar. I remember our going out to her truck where we kissed and fondled one another in the parking lot like teens. It was a sloppy session that ended with Cara in tears, not from anything I did or said, or at least as I can recall. Caught up in the whole of our affair, she spoke of “us,” and of Matt; she felt a need to decide what to do and looked to me for counsel. The irony was nearly too absurd to even consider. Just the same, I offered advice: I said there was no point in acting rashly now and confessing anything to Matt, that however hard it was to keep all of this a secret, it was best to say nothing and give ourselves time to figure things out. We went round and round a bit until Cara agreed and then we kissed some more before I returned to the bar and Cara drove off.
I let Fred back inside, dress, and go into my writing room and do what I can to work despite the gray pulse pounding in my head. I’m not much for coffee but drink what Gloria left behind. For the next several hours I struggle to compose a fresh scene, what I imagine about last night as Cara went home and what may or may not on its own be true. I picture Matt reading Auden when Cara pulls up. The light on the front porch is circled by two white moths. Lia and Eli are still out with friends. Matt watches Cara park her truck in the drive. She has stopped at the Gas ’N’ Shop and washed her face in the bathroom, she is nervous, tenuously composed, afraid she will start shaking as she comes up the steps and onto the porch.
Earlier in the day she had texted him and let him know there was a tree she had to pick up, a drive she needed to make tonight, and that she would not be home till late. He offered to go with her, but she texted back that she was already gone.
He shopped for dinner, fixed a meal for himself and the kids, ate in front of the TV where he watched the news and tried to concentrate on what was being reported, but mostly his mind wandered. He thought of her and what was happening now, whatever it was, what he didn’t understand even as he spent hours of his day writing about exactly this. Tired, his weariness troubling to a point where he grew angry, he thought, Enough. All this energy and effort to love and be happy and where had that brought them? Year after year to here, to discord and a disorder he can’t explain. Something had changed; the dissonance between them that they’d always managed to tame had grown too loud. The mechanism they counted on was breaking down, and what if McCanus was right? What if the effort to love singularly and forever was unrealistic, impractical to wish for, and impossible to achieve?
He considered this, then immediately dismissed the idea. He had loved Cara forever, been in love, and this had not changed. He told himself, repeating it again and again and again like a Gregorian monk soothing himself until his faith was restored.
He greets her warmly now. She touches his shoulder as she passes, she doesn’t stop but tells him that she has to pee. When he comes inside, she is in the shower. He waits on the bed. She steps from the bathroom already wrapped in a towel. Covering herself rather than walking naked around the room is a clear indication of her mood and he knows this. After twenty years he is more than aware of the signs, his motherboard tied to hers; even if he didn’t want to notice, it would be impossible now. He talks for a bit and asks about her drive and picking up the tree. Her reply is vague. She gets him to change the subject by asking about his day then leaves him to dress. Downstairs, he goes back out on the porch, resumes reading Auden and O Tell Me The Truth About Love: When I asked the man next door / Who looked as if he knew His wife got very cross indeed And said it wouldn’t do.
She comes down in the shorts and T-shirt she will sleep in. He asks if she had a chance to eat and she says yes. They go inside and sit and watch TV before she leaves again and heads to bed. He does not say anything to stop her. McCanus has sent him the link to the song Gloria came up with and he plays it again; he has listened several times already and is moved deeply. Impressed by Gloria’s talent, he enjoys what she has done and is looking forward to tomorrow.
By the time he goes upstairs it’s late. Lia and Eli come home and sleep soundly, dreaming as young people do. He envies them, he thinks of them in the morning when he rises and the house is quiet. At the high school he runs sprints against the boys. Back home he writes. Sometime after three he winds up his work and heads across town to Colossal, he leaves her a note but doesn’t text or call. Driving east, he hums the melody to his new song, louder and louder as he gets farther from home.
•
I write until two, then go downstairs and eat a sandwich. I think for a time about Lidia and imagine her baby and wonder what it will call me. Uncle Eric? How strange will that be? I think about Cara in nothing more th
an an exasperated way, and, finding Fred’s leash, we take a walk. The day is warm and the fresh air helps remove the remaining haze of my hangover. By the time I leave for Colossal, my head is clear and I’m ready to make music.
I reach the studio after Gloria and Matt and find them talking together. Matt has brought copies of his books while Gloria has printed out the poems I sent her way. I have also printed out the poems I plan to use, having marked them up with suggestions for how I hear the prose being introduced as lyrics. Gloria sits beside Matt on the couch on the far side of the studio. She is playing her guitar as they talk. The other three musicians are setting up. Matt stands as I come over. Frankie is there checking the mics. I gather everyone together and explain that I’d like to start with Matt’s poem-songs and record Gloria’s originals later this week. I ask Gloria if she’s come up with anything for the additional poems and she says she has a melody and lyrical framework “kinda sorta” roughed out.
We go over the new tunes with Gloria’s ideas presented first. The musicians follow her lead and improvise before I offer suggestions. I work on the bridge and change the chorus and a few other things around; I do not alter Matt’s words, but build a refrain from his prose as I did with “In The Mooring.” It takes an hour before we have enough to try laying down a cut. Throughout the process Matt is more engaged than I would have expected. Not just a casual observer, not there merely to meet the band and stand off to the side, he offers suggestions as well, has his own ideas on the vocals and how he hears the poem sung in his head.
Gloria is receptive enough to test Matt’s interpretations, she says “no” when she doesn’t like and “yes, yes” when something works. They establish a quick rapport. By eight o’clock we’ve recorded two songs and roughed out the direction we want to go on a third. As the songs are entirely new, I want to sleep on them and revisit tomorrow. We send out for Chinese and decide to eat and then see if we can lay down a fresh cut for “In The Mooring.” I ask Gloria how she’s holding up and she says, “You know me, I can go all night.”
The musicians have heard Gloria’s original performance of “In The Mooring,” and structurally there is little I want to change. I suggest an arrangement with very limited instrumentation, the drums using brushes, the keyboard and bass placed lightly behind the guitar. I take Matt into the engineering room as Gloria and the band record. Matt stands beside me and listens to Gloria, at one point surprising me as he grabs my arm and whispers, “She’s wonderful,” and smiles straight through for the rest of the song.
•
Gloria calls my cell as I’m driving home from Colossal. “Coffee?” she invites me. We meet at the Clover where I ask why she didn’t just suggest coffee before we left the studio, to which she says, “The studio’s for business.”
We sit in a booth, Gloria across from me. Our waitress is no longer young; she wears a pink and white uniform, a white cap, and white shoes. The uniform is humiliating and I smile charitably as she comes to our table. Gloria takes her coffee black. I’ve had too much coffee already today and order a Danish and water and wait to hear what Gloria wants to talk about. I am, as always, hopeful, imagining a scene where Gloria has changed her mind about having a baby with me, where she wishes to thank me properly for championing her music. I picture our reconciliation followed by a remarkable campaign where Gloria’s musical talents are introduced to the world and put on full display. A tour is planned as her CD with Matt’s poems and other originals goes gold, goes platinum, wins every conceivable year-end award. We will buy a new house together; will tour and travel the world; will become an inseparable and extremely successful and powerful couple; will be influential and generous as part of our success; will love one another fully and unconditionally; will raise our children—a girl and boy—to be creative and kind, appreciative and polite. We will grow old together in the sort of glorious harmony emblematic of our artistic efforts, and in the end, content, we will be grateful for our time as a couple and how lucky we were to have lived and loved one another.
This I can see, though Gloria has other plans; she has no interest in discussing the status of our relationship and wants rather to talk about Matt. “I like him,” she tells me. “He’s sharp. He’s funny and shy, but not timid, and he has a great ear. His poems are seriously amazing, his understanding of wordplay and phrasing, his rhythms. I wasn’t sure how things would go, but he actually gets what it takes to turn his words into song. I like working with him,” she repeats. “He makes me think of Leonard Cohen and John Berryman.”
“What do you know about Berryman?” I can’t resist.
Gloria snaps at me, “Shut up. You think you’re the only one who reads?” She quotes “Dream Song 29,” inserting my name into the poem: “There sat down, once, a thing on [Eric’s] heart so heavy, if he had a hundred years and more, and weeping, sleepless, in all them time / [Eric] could not make good.” As soon as she finishes, she gives me a look which insists I tell her honestly, “What are you up to, McCanus? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Right. This, Eric,” she flicks her hand back and forth between us and then up and out toward the window. “With Matt and these songs?”
Disappointed, I insist I’m up to nothing and swear that I’m trying to make amends, that since the Zell I felt bad and wanted to help Matt fix things with Cara.
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit?”
“Bullshit.” Obviously Gloria doesn’t believe me. “That’s not what you’re doing,” she says.
“No? What am I doing then?”
“You’re adding chapters to your book.”
Ahh. “If that were true,” I try to put the pressure of explaining back onto Gloria and ask, “why would I be offering to work with Matt now?”
“I don’t know,” Gloria admits. “That’s why we’re here. For you to tell me.”
“But I have,” I swear again, admitting that I was looking to mess with them before. “But all of that’s over now. I got the answer I want. I know Cara and Matt are nothing like how I first saw them. I get it. Every couple’s susceptible, isn’t that what you said? Besides, I promised to stop fucking with them and I have.”
“Have you?”
“I swear.”
Gloria holds her stare until I’m forced to look down. “And what about Cara?” she asks.
“What about her?”
“Are you fucking her?”
I have always been drawn to Gloria’s face, how handsome she is in that sort of Midwestern no-frills way. With some people, late in the day, as they tire and appear more vulnerable and worn, their features become less attractive, while with Gloria the opposite is true, the deepening of her eyes and no-nonsense turn of her lips adding to her attraction. I can’t for the life of me remember what I’ve told her about Cara, all the conversations running together, the things I may have confessed and what Gloria already knows, but I don’t believe I mentioned the latest and ask her here, “What makes you think that?”
Gloria puts both hands around her coffee mug and dares me to deny.
I argue back anyway and say, “Do you know how sexist you sound? Even if I wanted to fuck Cara, which I don’t, what makes you think I can so easily make this happen? All women don’t just want to fuck me.”
“Smokescreen, Mac,” Gloria rolls her eyes and goes, “When you resort to modesty as a defense I know you’re lying.”
I have no comeback for this. I am already wondering if I should confess about Cara and think this may be better in the long run, I am still debating when Gloria says, “It doesn’t matter to me who you sleep with, McCanus, but you got me involved in this project. We’re working with Matt now.”
“Which would be a problem if I was actually sleeping with his wife.”
I continue to deny it and watch to see if Gloria might believe, but she knows me too well, laughs and says, “McCanus, you are so full of shit.” Before I can respond, she warns me again not to involve her
in any of my nonsense. “It’s bad enough messing with Cara and Matt on your own,” she says, “but this is my career, my music, Glassnote is interested and honest to God, Eric, if all this blows up and Matt pulls his poems.”
“That won’t happen,” I assure her. “Everything’s good. Matt’s on board. You saw how happy he was tonight.”
“I did see. Which will make things even worse if he finds out.”
“There’s nothing to find out.”
“You can’t fuck with people, Mac, and think that’s going to make you feel better about yourself.”
I groan and insist, “But I feel fine about myself.”
Gloria ignores me and says, “I don’t want to see him get hurt. I like Matt, even if you don’t.”
“Who says I don’t like him? I like him a lot. I got him the Zell, didn’t I? And now I’m getting his poems turned into songs and out to a whole new audience.”
“And you’re screwing his wife.”
“Stop it now. Even if I was,” I say, “it wouldn’t mean I didn’t like Matt.” The comment is so ridiculously revealing that both Gloria and I can’t quite think of anything to say after that.
•
Tonight, when Matt gets home, Cara is sitting at the kitchen table playing cards with Eli and Lia. He greets his children, puts his phone down on the table, and has them listen to “In The Mooring.” Cara sits expressionless while Eli and Lia cheer. They ask questions and say they can’t believe how well the poem works as a song, the singing beautiful and way cool. He appreciates this. His children’s support means a great deal. He glances toward his wife and gauges her reaction. For as long as he can remember, he’s been attracted to her. Handsome and hale, a glorious Nordic girl, even late in the day she somehow avoids looking worn. Tonight, however, is different, the deepening of her eyes and firm pinch of her mouth anything but appealing. Her annoyance with him, her refusal to support what he is doing, cuts hard against his skin, slices deep to the bone.
Liars Page 13
