Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “It was mostly at night,” Sarah says. “Sometimes we could only nod and smile as we passed by each other, but other times, who knows? Maybe our hands would meet for a second and there would be a small present that made sleep come faster.”

  When they both turn their heads to look into the camera, Katie mouths the words she asked them—What kind of present?—and watches the cold air meeting her breath in puffy clouds.

  “Oh,” Sarah says, and she takes her free hand to pat Arthur’s arm, “nothing big, really. What did you have in a place like that?”

  Arthur laughs, a cloggy little rumble, and nods. “Sometimes a little discarded piece of red cloth. Sometimes just a smooth stone that I found in the yard,” he says. “It was not the gift that counted, you understand. It was the giving.”

  Sarah nods, her face growing still. “At night, when we would pass by each other, we knew how lucky we were to still be alive. The others—so many others, friends—” Sarah coughs, lowers her head.

  When she looks back up, her eyes do not meet the camera but wander to a space beyond it. “At night,” Sarah says, “that is when the ovens came to life. They waited until nighttime, but the sound, it was always in your ears, even when you woke.”

  Arthur leans over, captures her hand once again. His voice trembles, but it is full of bravado. “When this beautiful girl passed by and I could see her eyes, when I could see she was still alive,” he says, nodding briskly, “I thanked God for one more day, one more day. For her life.”

  Sarah closes her eyes, smiles faintly.

  Katie clicks off the sound, closes her eyes, too.

  She pictures them there, the long line of men walking one way, the women coming from the opposite direction, the lines passing each other at night between the rolling barbed-wire fences. She sees Arthur’s and Sarah’s eyes meet as they locate each other, the relief right there at the surface. As they pass by each other, their fingers flutter and reach out bravely, urgently, and Katie watches their hands suddenly grip, and then, just as suddenly, release.

  Outside, the smoke pours straight up from the smokestacks that are like giant barrels reaching into the night sky. The others—the others who are not so lucky, who did not pass by each other tonight and feel the warmth of a hand pressing their own—begin to softly feather down from the sky, their ashes landing on the hats and broad shoulders of the guards, who talk and spit and laugh.

  When the first snowflakes touch Katie’s cheeks, she raises her face to the sky and inhales deeply. She listens to the silence all around her, and she can almost feel it—she can almost feel the small stone being pushed into her palm with love.

  7

  The first thing Katie sees when she walks into the almost deserted Super Stop & Shop at 9:15 P.M. is that young checkout girl (Stacey or Tracy or something at like that), the one who’s always so happy and likes to chat it up and make lots of eye contact. Not tonight, Katie thinks, and then smiles and nods at the girl’s energetic waving. She shakes the snow out of her hair, scoots down Aisle One to take the back way to the freezer section.

  Always the night owl, Katie used to look forward to the girl’s silly chatter and laughter, but back in June, just a month after Nick’s murder, their light banter took an unexpected and unwelcome turn that still makes Katie squirm in her presence. The girl was packing up Katie’s groceries and taking her money, all the while keeping up a steady patter of gossip about her boyfriend, who never had the time to do anything romantic.

  “Like sitting there and watching him work on his stupid car all day is fun,” she grumbled, but her pretty, smiling eyes said that it probably was, or at least she didn’t mind it as much as she was expected to.

  What a luxury, Katie thought as she gazed at the girl, to actually look for things to complain about. And then the longing for Nick’s touch came again, vicious and breath-stealing, and she had to lean against the counter to keep from falling down. She blurted it out before she could stop herself.

  “My husband’s dead.”

  But the girl didn’t cringe or look away; she nodded sadly, handed Katie her change. Let the tips of her fingers rest in Katie’s palm a beat longer than necessary.

  “I know,” she said. “I saw it on the news.”

  At first Katie was relieved that it was out in the open, but by the time she reached her car with her plastic bags, she felt betrayed. All along, this girl knew who she was, and she never said anything, never gave one single indication? Katie realized that it wasn’t logical to be upset—after all, what was the girl supposed to say to her anyway? But despite her better judgment, Katie still can’t help but feel a tinge of resentment every time she sees this girl’s bright smile and larger-than-life wave. And ever since that night, too, she hasn’t been able to shake the feeling that all the people around her—complete strangers—are watching her, discussing her life, thinking they know everything about her from just a glance.

  She’s leaning deep into the ice-cream freezer, trying to decide on either Breyer’s cherry vanilla or mint chocolate chip, when she hears a familiar, happy voice.

  “Katie? Is that you in there?”

  Katie extracts herself from the freezer. Dottie Halverson, the short, portly nurse from the Warwick Center, stands a few feet away, smiling warmly at her.

  “Oh, hey. Hey, Dottie.”

  Her heart instantly thumps like crazy, but Dottie’s open and unguarded look quickly reminds Katie of the motherly nurse’s kind nature, of the card she sent after Nick’s funeral. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, but I’m thinking of you. We are all thinking of you.

  “Stocking up for the weather?” Katie asks in a bumpy voice.

  “Well, we are expecting a whole inch of snow, so of course Fred sent me out for critical supplies.” Dottie shakes her head, laughing, and tilts her basket forward so Katie can peer inside: a clear plastic bag filled with sesame-seed hoagie buns, two packages of pink, slippery-looking deli meat, and a box of Ring Dings.

  “I keep saying, ‘Fred, what happens when you have a massive coronary from eating all this stuff? What about me? Do you realize how embarrassing it will be? I’m a nurse!’ ”

  Katie tries to laugh along, then asks in a shy voice, “How is Fred?” Dottie pats her hand. “Oh, you know Fred. Still the same. Still good for nothing,” Dottie says, deadpan. Her eyes crinkle up, and she is laughing again, stepping forward to tug at Katie’s coat sleeve.

  Katie finally relaxes a little, smiles at the picture of Dottie and Fred together—how they walked with their bodies so close, Fred’s hand resting lightly on Dottie’s lower back. Fred always referred to Dottie as “my girl” to people, which made Dottie roll her eyes and click her tongue, but Katie also saw the blush of happiness that reached her cheeks every time.

  “So I see you’re stocking up on snow supplies, too,” Dottie says.

  “I’ve been making big decisions tonight,” Katie says, trying to sound lighthearted. She holds up the carton of Breyer’s. “Mint chocolate chip.”

  “Fred will be so proud when I tell him you were out buying ice cream instead of milk and bread.” Dottie laughs, motions to the top of the aisle with her chin. “Are you ready to check out, lady?”

  Katie nods, the use of Carly’s nickname for her making her heart squeeze like a fist.

  They walk up the aisle without speaking, turn left at the top, and begin the long walk toward the only lit register. Katie tries to slow their pace, to think of something cheerful and carefree to say, but the words and memories jumble inside her head, solid and strangling.

  “Dottie,” she says in a too-loud voice, stopping.

  Dottie stops also, face expectant. Katie sees the sympathy there when Dottie recognizes her pleading look, but it’s impossible to miss the uncertainty and hesitation lurking in her eyes as well.

  “Oh, Katie,” Dottie says, and takes a step toward her.

  “No, no, don’t—” Katie says, shaking her head, but she has no idea what she’s trying to refuse.
/>   Dottie nods. “Okay.”

  They stand like that for a moment, staring at different places on the floor. It sounds like someone has turned the Muzak up too loud; a bouncy version of “Little Jeannie” by Elton John bubbles down to them from the ceiling, airy and oppressive. Katie hears the squeak and whoosh of the automated doors opening, feels the short burst of cold air at her side and back, listens to the click of determined heels and the metallic sound of a woman’s bracelets jangling into each other as she walks past. Everything around her seems magnified, loaded with a bewildering significance.

  “We should probably—” Dottie says, turning and pointing to the register.

  “Right.”

  Katie makes it only a few steps this time. “It’s just—” she says, struggling, “just that—”

  Dottie stops again, turns halfway to her.

  “It’s—” Katie gives up, lets out a frustrated breath and looks at the display of shampoo at the end of Aisle Eight. The bright fluorescent green and pink and orange bottles are garish, almost dizzying. IS YOUR HAIR TIRED? STREZZZZED OUT? the sign above the bottles asks her. There’s a woman standing to the side of these words, her mouth wide open in a happy scream of elation, thrusting forward a pink bottle.

  “I don’t know, either, Katie.”

  She turns to Dottie.

  “About everything,” Dottie says. “I don’t know what to say about it either.” Another few seconds pass, more concentrated attention on the dirt caked into the blocky cracks in the linoleum floor. When Katie raises her head, she sees Dottie staring at the lit register.

  “Don’t do that, okay?” Katie says quietly.

  “What?”

  “That.” Katie points to the register. “Don’t want to get away from me, too. Not you.”

  “Oh, Katie,” she says, flushing deeply.

  “I couldn’t handle that, because . . .” Katie trails off.

  “Katie, I’m so sorry.” Dottie smiles sadly. “But I do, I have to go,” she says, turning away.

  And then the months without Nick turn into a concentrated liquid inside Katie’s legs, fingers; it’s difficult to stand, to even hold the ice cream anymore. She knows she’s going to lose it, really lose it, if she doesn’t say something—anything.

  “It’s gone!” Katie shouts at Dottie’s retreating figure.

  Dottie stops, turns around slowly.

  “It’s like . . . like everything good is gone,” Katie says, scratching at her forehead with her free hand, the ice cream numbing her fingers on the other. “But . . . but I keep thinking that maybe if I were good enough—if I were different—then maybe . . . maybe I would have found a way to keep it.”

  She nods hopefully at Dottie, waits for her acknowledgment, her understanding. The struggle is playing across Dottie’s face, her eyes blinking quickly. Maybe it’s a legal issue, maybe it’s something Donna Treadmont has advised the employees of the Warwick Center (Whatever you do, don’t talk to her!), but Katie knows, she just knows that when Dottie walks away now, another part of her—another big, irreplaceable part of her—is going to evaporate, just vanish.

  When Dottie moves to her side, Katie can’t help it—a quick, grateful sob comes bursting out. She clamps a hand over her mouth.

  Dottie’s voice is soft, earnest. “No one knows what to say anymore, honey. It all got so complicated, so quickly.” Katie allows Dottie to take her free hand. “But sometimes I think—no, I know—that no matter how complicated it is right now, some parts don’t have to end. Some parts are still there.”

  “I don’t . . . do you mean . . .”

  Dottie lowers her head, choosing her words. When she looks back up at Katie, her face is determined. “You could be a part of Jerry’s life again—No, please, Katie, listen,” she says in a rush. “If you would just go see him, just once, I know you’d feel better. He’s like a frightened child right now, and he needs you, you’re the only one he wants right now—”

  Katie yanks her hand from Dottie, backs away shaking her head.

  “There’s a list of people who can visit him,” Dottie says. “They only allow so many, but Patricia could get you on that list, I know she could if you wanted to see him—”

  “No—” Katie says, taking another step back, her heart roaring inside her ears.

  “They finally allowed a night-light,” Dottie says. “We gave Donna the Bugs Bunny one, that one you bought him years ago when you moved into the house? Bedtime is even worse now, because he’s thinking of his mother all the time, and how God is going to come and punish him. You’ve seen it with your own eyes, Katie. If you could try to remember—”

  Katie backs into the bright shampoo display, feels the heavy bottles crashing down around her, on her thighs, her left foot. Before Dottie can say another word, though, Tracy, or Casey, steps out from behind her register in her green apron to flag them down.

  “Over here, ladies! Only one open!” she yoo-hoos. “Don’t worry about the bot-tles!”

  “My God, Dottie,” Katie whispers. She turns, walks briskly in the direction of the register, almost trips over a rolling green bottle.

  “Katie,” Dottie says behind her, “he’s scared, but—but Jerry thinks he did a good thing. He thinks he saved Nick.”

  Katie’s entire body jerks at these words, one violent internal wrench. She shakes her head and waves Dottie off without turning around. Too much.

  When she reaches the counter, she drops the ice cream on the conveyer belt and focuses hard on the girl’s name tag: Tricia. Tricia.

  “Hey, you,” Tricia says happily, reaching for the carton of ice cream. Katie’s face must be panicked, because Tricia’s eyes go wide and she sucks in her breath. Katie looks helplessly at her, pulls her purse onto the counter as the girl scans the ice cream. She keeps her head lowered and tugs at the zipper, but it’s stuck; there’s white tissue woven into the teeth from the inside and it won’t budge. Dottie’s footsteps come up behind her.

  “Hey, Justin?” Tricia says in a smooth, professional voice Katie has never heard before, “Are you able to take a customer?”

  Katie turns to the front of the store, sees the pimply kid behind the customer-service desk looking around the empty store. He humps his shoulders up.

  “Sure,” he says, and then Tricia is smiling big over Katie’s shoulder.

  “Ma’am? Justin will take you over at the customer-service counter so you don’t have to wait.”

  Katie lowers her head gratefully, keeps tugging at the zipper with trembling fingers.

  “Katie?” Dottie says behind her, but Katie keeps her head down and shakes it slowly this time. “Okay. Okay,” Dottie says and moves away.

  “Here,” Tricia says gently, and takes the purse out of Katie’s fumbling hands. She jiggles the catch a little, unzips the purse in one fluid motion. The girl reaches into the purse, shuffles around, pulls out Katie’s wallet.

  “Cash?” Tricia asks.

  Katie nods without looking up, watches Tricia’s perfectly manicured fingers unsnap the wallet, flip through the bills, pull out a five. The polish is a deep, shiny red, with alternating white X’s and O’s in the center of each nail. Katie closes her eyes, listens to the beep of the register, to her heart pumping, pumping.

  She’s not sure how long she stays like this, only knows that when the girl finally speaks, her rib cage doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode or collapse anymore.

  “She’s gone,” Tricia says, and Katie opens her eyes. The girl puts the change into her wallet and the wallet back into her purse. She zips up the purse and pushes it toward Katie.

  “Thank you,” Katie says quietly.

  “You’re welcome.” They hold each other’s eyes for a few, quiet beats.

  “She worked with my husband,” Katie says.

  “I figured it might have something to do with that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It must be, like, so hard all the time,” Tricia says.

  “You can’t imagine.”


  “Guess not.”

  Another small beat.

  “I . . . I like your nails,” Katie says.

  The girl looks down at her nails. She takes a little step back and flares her fingers against her green apron. “Très chic, no?” she says with a grin in her voice.

  Tricia flutters her fingers, and it is only then that Katie notices the swell under the green apron.

  “Almost four months,” Tricia says, nodding and resting her hands on top of her stomach.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I know,” the girl says, “Kenny is so freaked.”

  Katie pulls the straps of her purse over her shoulder, speechless.

  “My mom’s refusing to help now, too. She’s all like, ‘You play, you pay,’ but I don’t really care. She’s always been a wicked jerk to me anyway. That’s why I’m in my own place already.”

  “What about—what about your father?”

  Tricia shrugs. “I haven’t seen him in ages.”

  Katie knows that she should say something encouraging, but all she can think is that this world, this whole stupid world, is hopeless. Tricia pops the ice cream into a beige plastic bag.

  “So what will you two do now?” Katie asks.

  Tricia shrugs again. “I don’t know what Kenny will do, but I’m having a baby,” she says.

  Katie blinks at her a few times, shakes her head. “But—but won’t it be so difficult, all by yourself?”

  “I’m not saying he’s refusing to help, and believe me, I’ll be totally freaked if he bounces. But what can you do?” She pushes the plastic bag toward Katie.

  Katie just stares.

  “Be careful out there,” Tricia says, “because even, like, this little bit of snow makes the roads pretty slick.”

  8

  By the time Katie rounds the corner and turns onto her street, the snow has slowed to barely a trickle, but she keeps her wipers on full blast anyway. Tears pool at the back of her throat, inch upward with every swipe of the blades that seem too close to her face.