Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “So I say to her father—you see, I was brave back in those days, and I saw her, beautiful girl, peeking out from the kitchen—and I say to him, this man, ‘So this pastry, it’s filled with gold for that price?’ ”

  Arthur leans forward and laughs, slaps his knee with a gnarled hand, then uses his index finger to push his glasses back into place. Sarah fiddles with the hem of her shirt, her eyes cast modestly down, but there is a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

  “This is a bold thing, you understand,” Arthur says, “nothing good could come of it, I knew. But what does it matter when a man sees the girl he’s going to marry for the first time? The head, it’s not on straight.”

  “He was a serious man, my father. A respected man,” Sarah says, looking up. “This was not the best way to begin.”

  She tilts her head toward Arthur, who nods and places his spotted hand on her knee.

  “But this love, it is a serious thing, too, no?” he says. “How do you convince a boy not to be bold after he looks into this beautiful girl’s eyes?”

  And then Sarah is giggling like a teenager, her cloudy eyes are squinting up at his with love, and their bodies are leaning into each other from across the years, meeting again for the first time.

  Watching Sarah and Arthur smile and touch and travel through the years together tonight requires a drink that will burn on the way down, something that will help her relax, so Katie’s on her knees in front of the liquor cabinet, pushing aside bottles. Of course this plan to work during the trial seems ridiculous at times, even absurd—returning home each night after court, keeping her emotions in check and her head clear enough to make this project come together. But her mother has given her countless looks of uncertainty, and perhaps this is what has finally compelled Katie to persist: a stubborn compulsion to prove her mother wrong, to show her and everyone else just how strong she still is. So while she does have her own suspicions about her explanation—that her nights will be easier if she can make some headway on this film rather than coming home to relive every word, every emotion from the trial—Katie does see the glimmer of reason behind it, too. Shifting her attention onto the Cohens could be just the relief she needs to get through the long days ahead of her.

  When Katie articulates it like this inside her head, she feels a trace of that relief, but there’s still the same snag; she has watched Arthur and Sarah Cohen speak to her for so long, and she still has no idea what she needs to keep, what needs to be edited out. What the real story is.

  She spots the tall bottle of Dewar’s at the very back of the cabinet, ducks her head in and reaches for it.

  Katie wonders how Richard will handle the questioning of witnesses tomorrow, how many times his words will summon Nick into the room, how many times Nick’s presence will whisper into the air around her as she sits there in the front row, alone. She’s asked her family and her friends to stay away, has explained to them that reliving the details of Nick’s death will be transforming, healing even, if she’s left alone to process the facts by herself one last time. They’ve all agreed for now—the majority of them much too easily, and some, like her sister and parents, with reluctance and more than one look of misgiving—but she has convinced most of them that in some ways it will actually be good for her. Of course she doesn’t believe this for a moment—she wants to indulge her anger, to soak and simmer in it every time Nick’s name is mentioned, every time another detail is brought to light, and she doesn’t want any witnesses.

  Katie feels a quick jolt of anger now at the picture of Richard in the courtroom today, his theatrics with the jurors. And yet she understands what he’s doing up there, how he creates an entire world with his words, with the way he moves his body, with his silence. When he speaks to the jurors—when he lifts his hand and offers them his palm—another part of Nick’s life is somehow instantly reborn in their minds. When Richard stops speaking, when he lowers his head to knead the back of his neck with his fingertips, she knows that another image of Nick is suddenly pulled from out of the shadows, and that the jurors can feel the weight of his absence even though they’ve never met him. But while she understands the importance of all this, there is still something that brings on the anger in brief, furious surges. And it’s not because it isn’t up to her to coax the story out, to capture the way a person’s body leans forward or suddenly stills—not because she can’t cut and edit and create a new story out of the pieces that are offered to her. No, it’s that Richard’s every word, his every movement, is planned, calculated.

  She imagines what she would see if she searched his case notes—every shake of his head, every step, carefully choreographed. 1. When you talk about how much Katie misses Nick, lower your head and absently twirl your wedding ring. 2. Remember to shake your head in disbelief when you tell them that Jerry smiled before he shot Nick.

  All of Richard’s emotions, all his actions, scripted out, rehearsed. But where, in all this performance, she thinks, is Nick? Where is the real man, the man she’s lost, the genuine feeling that should come easily, naturally? It’s this elaborately planned orchestration, when there is so much that should be real to Richard, that fills her body with rage, that makes her want to take her grief and offer it to him in concrete, painful forms.

  Back on the deck, Katie takes a long swallow of the warm liquid, places the glass on the arm of the chaise lounge, and steps over to the projector. She turns a knob, stares at the tips of the swaying trees while the film fast-forwards and the alcohol boils inside her empty stomach.

  The November wind is growing colder. If winter comes charging through Rhode Island early this year, it will turn everything gray and dull and motionless—the perfect setting for Nick’s trial. Earlier today, after she left the courthouse in Providence to make her way to the parking garage on Packet Street, she stopped to watch a soft fall breeze pick up the trash on the sidewalk and send it into the air a few feet—a dazzling, swirling flight. But it felt wrong, the way it took her breath away for a second, how it made her stare in wonder; if the streets were empty, she would have rushed into the middle of the tiny cyclone of newspapers and candy wrappers, legs kicking out, hands attacking. There is no time for the surprises of nature now: she wants things to freeze, to grow cold and colorless and still, a quiet stage for what is to come.

  She releases the fast-forward button on the projector, flips the sound switch, and settles into the lounge with her blanket and drink.

  Arthur’s and Sarah’s bodies straighten and lean toward her slightly, a response to her asking a question from behind the camera. They settle back against the couch, bodies suddenly stiff, eyes round and vulnerable.

  “Yes, Hannah, my sister. She was the first one in our family,” Arthur finally says. His big eyes blink twice and stray slightly to the left, his hands folding into each other on his lap. There is a slight, uncertain smile on Sarah’s face as she stares directly into the camera.

  “She had blond hair and blue eyes, you see,” Arthur says, nodding, “so you think to yourself, ‘This one will be safe, this one looks good, just like them.’ ”

  The smile on Sarah’s face looks pasted on now—she gazes into the camera like she is waiting to have her picture taken.

  Katie stands with her drink, walks down the steps of the deck and onto the matted, dying lawn. She drifts over to the shed slowly, careful not to step into the stream of the projector’s light.

  “We needed to eat, you understand?” Arthur says, his voice echoing into the night from the deck. He leans forward, his fingers suddenly coming alive. They flutter in his lap like moths, but Sarah remains silent, eyes wide and unblinking. “How can you ask people to take the bread out of their own mouths, to starve along with us? They were risking death as well with our presence in their home.”

  The silence stretches across the years, weighs down Arthur’s shoulders until his back bows.

  “What else could we do but send her?” he finally asks, but his body, his eyes—now even bigger
because Katie stands only a few feet away—say that maybe there were other answers.

  Katie steps into the stream of light and places her hand flat on the shed, in the space that is now like a chasm between Arthur and Sarah. She watches the dusty light twinkle and move on her hand, on her arm, then closes her eyes as another wind pushes through her backyard, her hair. Above her the leaves rustle loudly, a pair of wings flutter past, and then the night quiets completely.

  When she opens her eyes, she sees the shadows moving on her hand—the space between her friends closing, their bodies moving back together again.

  Later, Katie sits in the dark, staring at the side of the shed where her friends were only moments ago. She’s thinking of possibilities, of what life pretends to offer—of what it bestows instead. How she was sitting in this very chair that afternoon, though it was pushed to the edge of the deck to catch the last rays of the late spring afternoon on her bare legs. She remembers that she was strangely happy that day, for no particular reason except that Nick might call—he might be thinking of her at that very moment, too. And then the phone rang, and she smiled, suddenly filled with hope; she jumped up, hurried into the house. Answered the phone, almost breathless, still smiling.

  Less than an hour later, she waited on the other side of the window, willing herself to stand—to keep standing.

  —Just a few seconds, the woman beside her had said, to confirm the identity.

  In just a few seconds Nick would grant another part of his life to Katie, irrevocable: an image that would permanently inscribe itself into her brain, fusing with every memory they ever created together. Every time she recalled something specific between them—a casual conversation over dinner, an early spring morning in bed and inside each other’s arms, a fiery argument about his mother—this new picture of him would forge its way to the surface, superimposing itself over the passionate, the ordinary. Katie couldn’t shake the almost cinematic feeling of the moment, the blurred, dreamlike quality of what was about to happen; she imagined the blinds opening, her breath compromised, her eyes roaming over Nick’s ashen face as the blood drained from her own. This last picture of him carving deep spaces inside her, pushing aside everything that existed before. She saw the curt nod she would give the woman who insisted on standing too close, like she was waiting to catch Katie’s inevitable crumble to the floor.

  Around her, sounds were filtered through cotton: a door opening, the approach of clicking footsteps—muffled and distanced, but somehow still so loud they felt like sharp fingernails jabbing into Katie’s ribs. And then a voice, right behind her, icy and clear:

  —I’m here to identify the body.

  Candice. Nick’s mother.

  Katie looked straight ahead. Placed her hands on the ledge of the window. The woman beside her uttered some confused words—Katie heard only “wife” and “kin,” and then Candice’s reply.

  —My son left her a month ago. I’m his next of kin.

  Katie sensed the woman looking at her, but she kept her eyes trained on the window. As if on cue, the blinds opened and a man in a white coat nodded at her, walked around the metal gurney. Gently pulled down the sheet from Nick’s face. Waited patiently for Katie’s affirmation, because she was staring at him, at this attendant, instead of at her dead husband. Trying to assemble a response for Candice before she saw Nick for the last time. I asked him to leave. Temporarily. He was still mine. But before the words would come, Candice’s cold voice again:

  —That’s my son. That’s my Nicky.

  Finally Katie turned her eyes to the table, to the sheet rising over Nick’s face. She saw his thick eyebrows, a patch of dark hair, before the sheet was pulled over him completely. Fought the urge to bang on the glass with the palm of her hand, to yell, Wait, wait—I didn’t see!

  She sensed Candice staring at her, refused to turn around. Katie had nothing to be ashamed of—she didn’t do anything wrong. Nick would have come back to her.

  —He was a brilliant man, Candice finally said to Katie’s back. Proud and accusatory at the same time.

  Katie listened to her mother-in-law’s footsteps clicking away (her ex-mother-in-law now?) and wished she could shout at the woman—just hurl those last revelations Nick had shared with her before he left, the kind of husband-wife secrets that would ravage Candice on lonely nights.

  And then she wished, despite herself, for that last tormenting image of Nick to crowd into her memories, to obliterate everything else that came before this moment. Instead of this, instead of finally turning around to watch his mother walk away, her head held high, strangely triumphant.

  2

  Yes, Nick comes back to her in the nights now—in the shadowed recesses of their bedroom, in her dark, wandering dreams. And he is there in the day, too, when she prepares her solitary meals, when she makes the bed and smooths her hand over the comforter on his side, when she aimlessly flips through channels and catches herself stopping on the Discovery Channel, his favorite. Even when she stumbles into the bathroom in the morning, Nick is there and not there: the absence of the coffee ring he used to leave on the sink each morning before work, no matter how many times she asked him to clean it up. The surprise, the catch in her throat even now when she sees the gleaming porcelain.

  Always this fixed, shapeless weight—he is still gone, he is still with her.

  He is never far away, even when this heaviness lifts temporarily, and the moment is hers alone: in the shower, when she bends her head under the stream, the delicious feel of heat on her neck; in the car, an old song on the radio, the music recalling family vacations and her sister dancing into the ocean. Glorious, forgetting moments, like brief pockets of extra-oxygenated air—but then it is worse, because seconds after, there is the quick pulse of remembering, and Nick steals back into the frame completely. And another face, too, peering at Katie from the background. Jerry. Teasing his way into their story.

  Today, before court begins, the moment comes with the dark brown smell of coffee sputtering into the pot downstairs as she runs a brush through her hair; as she inhales deeply, Nick slips away, and Katie feels the visceral joy of anticipation, the deep-roasted heat on her tongue. And then, before she can stretch inside the moment, she is propelled back once again: Nick in their kitchen on Sunday mornings, the clink of their mugs as he takes them out of the cupboard, his soft, happy whistling drifting up the stairs to her. And Jerry, he is there, too, bundled under the covers in the spare bedroom upstairs, asking her to tell it again to start his day with them. It May, he’d always begin, and Katie would settle at the edge of the bed, her hand resting on the rise of Jerry’s arm underneath the blanket. Wanting to go to Nick instead, to accept the mug of coffee and the first lazy kiss of the day, but not before this—not before giving her story with Nick to Jerry all over again, like a gift.

  —We met on Patience Island, just after sunset, she’d always begin, but Jerry wouldn’t be fooled.

  —No, Kay-tee. It May. His voice dreamy, a child waiting for a favorite fairy tale from beginning to end. Knowing each word by rote, ready to point out inconsistencies.

  —It was May, she’d start again, and watch him grip the covers up to his chin, his eyes round with excitement.—The afternoon of Dana’s engagement party.

  —It too hot, Jerry would say, and she’d nod.

  It was too hot for May, and a deep, repressive heat had settled in her parents’ crowded backyard, wilting the streamers and the potato salad, the big YOU’RE ENGAGED! sign that one of her aunts had tacked over the back door. Katie sat away from the crowd in a scratchy lawn chair positioned under a canopy of leaves, fanning her face with a paper plate and waiting for the couple to arrive. At her mother’s insistence, she had spent twenty minutes mingling, taking part in mundane conversations with her extended family, until an uncle she hadn’t seen in years cornered her by the grill to comment on how much she’d grown, how much she looked like her older sister now. Twenty-one now, are you? he said. Twenty-two, Katie corrected, a
nd he nodded, squinted hard at her. The spitting image of Dana five years ago, he declared, then nodded briskly as if he were trying to convince himself. Katie managed a smile at this well-intentioned compliment, then escaped to her private block of shade to wait it out.

  From across the lawn, Katie suddenly heard someone’s happy catch of breath, and then her sister, Dana, stunning in a sky blue sundress, was stepping out the kitchen door and onto the lawn. The backyard exploded with spontaneous clapping and cheers, with earsplitting whistles. Katie rose and clapped along, watched Dana’s modest smile grow. Her sister turned back to the door, pulled Michael out beside her, covered his hand with both of hers. Their relatives took this as their cue and instantly vultured around the beaming couple, offering their congratulations, touching and fussing and demanding equal attention. I hope Michael shaves before the wedding, Katie thought idly. Otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it from Mom.

  —He not shave, Jerry would interrupt here, giggling.

  —No, he never did.

  But even if Michael’s thick beard and curly brown hair were a little too scruffy for their mother’s taste, it was clear that he made Dana happy, that he adored her. As Katie looked around now, it was clear that everyone adored Dana, something Katie was used to by this point—it didn’t surprise her one bit that just seeing Dana could make the applause erupt, could make the family jostle each other out of the way to get closer to her. Katie wiped the sweat from her forehead, tried to ignore the jealousy that had come, unbidden, and then the sharp stab of guilt—always the guilt. Because if anyone in the world deserved to be loved and cherished like this, it was her sister, Dana—her kind and beautiful sister, the best person Katie knew. (Though these feelings of jealousy and guilt, along with many other things, she always remembered to keep from Jerry.)