Friends and Liars

by Kaela Coble

  Ally and I have spoken just twice since the bachelorette party. The first time was the day after she left New York. I called to apologize again for not claiming the secret earlier. To be fair, I wasn’t sure what had happened until Ally told me in earnest the secret wasn’t hers. I suspected, and I suppose the reason I never opened my envelope is so I didn’t have to know for sure. I insisted on getting on the phone with Aaron to tell him as much. It was the least I could do. To Aaron’s credit, he accepted my apology graciously. I could hear a hint of curiosity, but he did not—as Ally had—demand details like when exactly it happened and how could I not have told anyone, and who was the father, anyway? I remained vague. I told Ally it was a really difficult time for me, right before I left for college. I told her the father of the child was not someone I was proud of, and that he never even knew about it, so I didn’t feel right telling her, either. All that was true. But just like with Danny, I didn’t tell Ally the whole story, and she drew her own conclusions.

  The only thing Aaron put me on the spot about was Ally’s real secret. She still insists Danny outed her pregnancy—her completely planned for, and very much wanted, first pregnancy. I told him the same thing I told Ally: that I hadn’t read it. But based on the way she snatched the envelope out of my hand and inspected the seal for tampering, I’m guessing she’s hiding something a little darker. I did not voice this suspicion to Aaron. They’ve been through enough, and I’m not going to play any further part in straining their marriage than I already have.

  Just remember that all things done in the dark have a way of coming to light.

  The second time Ally and I have spoken since the bachelorette party was her call to invite me to her annual Christmas party. Could I come home a couple days early in order to make it? Just like when we were young, I was so happy she seemed to have forgiven me that I immediately agreed. I had already taken the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve off for the pre-wedding festivities and, of course, the wedding itself. But I asked my boss if I could have a few extra days, with my fingers crossed behind my back for him to refuse. The fact that he allowed it is my karma for letting Ally take my fall, because it means I will be spending Christmas with Nancy and my father.

  I’ve gotten out of coming home for every holiday season since college by scheduling a trip to see Greta or Coral, wherever in the world they are living or working at the time. I cite limited vacation time to Nancy, but she’s not stupid. She knows I don’t want to come home. Just the thought of spending the holidays in the place I grew up brings on a flood of images: Nancy in a black period, too depressed to get out of bed and prepare the fancy Christmas Eve dinner she planned, a ham spoiling on the counter while Dad hid in his den. Nancy still drunk in the wee hours of Christmas morning, while we opened presents and pretended not to listen to the veiled insults she and my father traded. My parents screaming at each other on New Year’s Eve after coming home from a party where she drank too much and he flirted with someone else’s wife.

  But I can’t blame my white knuckles completely on my family. Some of it lies with Danny, and some with me. Mostly, it’s the unknown. When I came home in September, I knew it would be awful—an overwhelming mess of grief, awkwardness, and nostalgia. Not great things, but I could anticipate them. This time, I have no idea what to expect. Ally assured me she wouldn’t tell anyone that the abortion secret was mine, but how can I trust a girl who cares more about what people think than anyone I know?

  All things done in the dark . . .

  And then there was that missed call I got last week. It was from an 802 number, Vermont’s one-and-only area code. When I saw it, my mind instantly flashed to Murphy’s face, and I didn’t answer it for fear of a confrontation I was not yet prepared for. It could have been anyone, but I have Ally, Emmett, Steph, her bridesmaids (including the dreaded Krystal), and my family saved as contacts in my phone. Who else would be calling me from a Vermont number? The thought both thrills—does he miss me?—and scares me—is he calling because he knows? As angry as I am at Murphy, and as many times as he’s let me down, I still think of him as my best friend. Like it or not, his opinion of me matters.

  Even if Ally has somehow managed to keep quiet, I still have this feeling. It started a few days ago. A constant, chilling bubbling of nerves, making me feel like my body is made up of ice-cold lava. Every unexpected noise launches me out of my skin. Every night’s sleep is filled with images of Danny, sometimes memories resurfacing from the past, sometimes things that will never be, conversations that will never take place. When I’m awake, it’s like I feel him watching me. Something tells me he will make good on his promise. That, somehow, the whole truth will come to light. And when it does, despite Ally’s assurance that she’ll always be my friend, I’m not sure if she, or anyone, will ever be able to forgive me.

  Please don’t hate me.

  I’ve thought about canceling. Oh, believe me. I’ve had the phone in my hand a dozen times, poised to dial Emmett’s number and tell him I got pulled into a shitstorm of work to wrap up before the end of the year, and I’m not able to come home for the wedding after all. But then I picture his face. Emmett, my brother. The pain-in-the-ass boy who grew up to be a man with a heart that will kill him before his time. And Steph, sweet Steph, who has welcomed me into her family, despite knowing nothing about me. I can’t disappoint them.

  And even if I could be that horrible, something tells me I’m in this now. That I have to see it through to the end.

  I pull up to the house, hesitating before I park this Sentra in the same spot I used to park Blue, and I sit for a few moments before I get out. Twinkling lights rim the roof and shine through the snow-covered cedar bushes. The two thin white pillars that support the front porch roof are wrapped with red ribbon (one ruby red, one coral red, my mother used to say), giving them the appearance of candy canes. Through the sheer curtains of the living room, I see the artificial tree that’s overseen our Christmas proceedings for as long as I can remember. We always begged for a real tree, but my mother wouldn’t hear of the money wasted each year on a tree that would only end up on the curb at the end of the season.

  I walk up the steps and through the back door that leads into the kitchen, inhaling the scent of baking bread, and I remember that not all the days of Christmas were so tense and melancholy. There were the days when the lights first went up, when Mom would take our picture in front of the newly decorated house for the annual Christmas card. There was the party at my father’s company at headquarters in New York, where all the employees’ children got an age-appropriate toy that we then played with obsessively on the trip home. There were the Christmas hams she did manage to serve, with all the trimmings; and the sugar cookies we helped her frost, as we stood on stools and donned aprons our mother had hand-sewn, our tongues poked out in concentration as we tried to copy her intricate frosting patterns.

  I feel suddenly sick with guilt and nostalgia. Nancy has been on her medication and off the hooch since I was seventeen years old, and yet every year I make an excuse to stay away from her, on a holiday that is so centered around family. I wonder if this is the first time she’s even made the effort to put up the decorations since both her daughters left home. And in punishing her, we’re punishing ourselves, because we’ve missed out on ten years of the best of our mother.

  How much it must break her heart for me and Coral to withhold our love, year after year, and still she stays sober. Still she remains committed to treatment for her illness. It occurs to me that Nancy is not the only one I’ve shut out of my heart rather than forgive, and it’s about time I change that. The realization freezes me to the spot in the kitchen. I drop my bag, my body racked with violent sobs. Just like the evening in Murphy’s bed, it’s too much. Too many memories, too many old feelings. Too much regret.

  And then my mother is there, enveloping me in a hug. I fall into her and cry, telling her how sorry I am, and she is shushing me and stroking my hair and telling me everything is
going to be okay. She smells like vanilla, without even a hint of wine. It’s going to be a sugar cookies and ham kind of Christmas.

  But first. “Mom,” I say, using her proper title for the first time in twelve years, “I have to tell you something.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  RUBY

  Back then

  I sit with my knees hugged to my chest, a blanket wrapped around me, watching the bursts of light explode over the lake, miles and miles away. It’s chilly for the fourth of July, even by Vermont’s standards, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with my shivering. Lately, I feel an almost constant chill. I think of the crew, arranged in a semicircle in their camp chairs down at the park, sipping from their Burger King cups that are secretly filled with liquor. Surrounded by thousands of Chatwickians doing the same. For the first time, Murphy will be among them. And Taylor will be beside him. For the past four years he’s watched the fireworks with me, here, on the flat part of my parents’ roof. He and Danny both. But we’re no longer the unit of three we once were. Perhaps we never were.

  It’s been another two weeks of deep hibernation, only leaving the house to do shifts here and there at The Exchange. I’ve been training Lacey, my replacement, a rising sophomore who is painfully chipper against my canvas of torment. Another person who’s shown me how easily replaced I am among the people I love. Shawna and Donna love Lacey; the crew has embraced Taylor since her return from “horse camp;” and I have been forgotten. This time around, there have been no phone calls to dodge. Ally, Emmett, Murphy—they all saw me leave the party with Hardy Crane, and none of them have the strength or the sympathy left to drag me through that again. Danny is the only one I still talk to, although we don’t talk about me and Hardy. We don’t talk about me at all. He mostly just comes over and watches TV with me.

  I’m startled by the whoosh of a screen opening. Before his feet even appear through my parents’ bedroom window, I know it’s him. The tears that spring to my eyes dissipate the image of Murphy and Taylor holding hands from adjacent nylon chairs. What is he doing here?

  “Jesus, Tuesday, it’s not that cold,” he says, craning his head to see me.

  “Go away, Murphy.” I bat at my eyes with the back of my hand before he can see I’m crying.

  “No.” He navigates the slope of the roof carefully and joins me, mimicking my posture. We sit in silence for a moment, watching the fireworks.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He looks at me in surprise. “It’s the fourth of July. Where else would I be?” I don’t answer. “Where are your parents?” he tries.

  “In Jamaica. Another ‘reunion’ trip.” He nods. Every time my parents fight now, they make up by going on a trip together, rather than (metaphorically) traveling apart. Their therapist is very supportive.

  “Where’s your girlfriend?” I ask. “How are things with Miss Teen Vermont, by the way?”

  “Don’t do that,” he says. “She’s actually—”

  “I don’t actually want to know, Murphy.”

  He sighs. “I miss you. I really fucking miss you, Tuesday. I know I’m the bad guy here, but you’re not the only one whose heart is broken.”

  I don’t even know how to express my inability to understand this. How can he be heartbroken and happy in a relationship at the same time? What kind of sociopath can compartmentalize his feelings so ruthlessly? The word that appears in my brain every morning when I wake up flashes like one of the fireworks I’m pretending to care about: Why? But I don’t ask it.

  “I’m sorry, Tues. I don’t like the way this all happened. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Lied to me?”

  “What did I lie about?”

  “You should never have told me you loved me. I’m your best friend, and you used the oldest trick in the book to get me back into bed.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Of course that’s what I think, Murphy! How could you love someone and then just cut them loose without any explanation?”

  “I told you, I didn’t think it would work out.”

  “Yeah, I know, I remember. You didn’t want to have to miss me. Genius plan—clearly it’s working wonders.”

  “It wasn’t just that.”

  Again, I don’t ask what else it was. I’m afraid any more weight on my shoulders will topple me right off this roof. But he tells me anyway.

  “Ruby, look at me.”

  It takes me a second to gather the strength, but I do. He’s the same old Murphy, but now that I know I love him, it feels like staring into the sun.

  “We would have the summer, then you would leave. For New York, where you’ve always dreamed of living. And you’ll change there. You’re supposed to. And I’ll be here, doing what makes me happy, and pretty soon the gap between who we are now and who we become will just be too big.”

  In his eyes is something I’ve never seen before. A maturity, but also a sorrow.

  I sniff, and my voice cracks with every word. “But we could have tried, Murph. I think, with all that we mean to each other, we should at least have tried.”

  “And what would the best-case scenario have been, for us as a couple? That you would miss me so much you would come home, live in Vermont forever? Then what?”

  “Then maybe we could have been happy.”

  He takes my hand. “Maybe for a little while, but how could I do that to you? How could I hold you back from the life you’ve always wanted? How could I be happy, knowing what you gave up to be with me?”

  I watch as the words come out of his mouth, but it sounds scripted, like something a boy would say to a girl in a Lifetime movie. Like something a boy would say to a girl because he thought that’s what she wanted to hear. And suddenly I’m angry again. “That’s a real pretty speech, Murphy. Tell Cecile she should have been a writer.”

  He looks as if I’d slapped him, and it feels good to see him hurt, to have some of my power back. So I look away, and just let my comment hang there.

  “Fine,” he says. “All right. You want to know why I didn’t go through with this? With us?”

  “I do, but I don’t think you’re really going to tell me.”

  “It’s this! This right here. You make everything so hard! You never let me get away with anything. You know every secret and everything I’m thinking and feeling before I can even put a name to it.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It’s fucking annoying! Maybe I want to have some secrets. Maybe I want to be with someone who doesn’t have debates with Emmett that make me feel stupid and small.”

  “I don’t make you—”

  “Someone who doesn’t tell me how I feel. Someone who wants a simpler life, like me, who isn’t going to spend her life being disappointed in me and resenting me for what she could have had. With Taylor it’s…”

  “Easy,” I say.

  “What’s wrong with easy?”

  At first I can’t think of an answer. What is wrong with easy? I don’t know, I’ve never known what easy feels like. And Murphy, aside from keeping Danny’s secret, has never known what hard feels like. He’s not built for it. He’s not strong enough. I look him in the eye, mustering all the fury and all the pain I’ve felt in the last few months. “You are such a coward,” I say. His face turns cold, and he stands up and scales the roof to climb back inside.

  I follow him, not ready to let him leave without a fight. “That’s what they call people who do the easy thing instead of following what’s in their hearts. You go ahead and build your simple little life with your adoring little puppy dog girlfriend following you around and doing whatever you say, but you’ll be bored to tears. You’ll always have me in the back of your mind. And I won’t be there. I’ll move on. I’ll get over it, because at least I tried. But you’ll regret this decision for the rest of your life.”

  He looks at me, the anger fading from his eyes as he sees the tears stream down my face. He knows what I’m saying is true, just like I kno
w what he’s saying is true. If we were to be together now, we would destroy each other.

  Murphy puts his arm around me and pulls me to him, and with my head buried in his shoulder I hear him sniff, and sniff again. I put my hand up to his face, and then we are clutching onto each other, crying. Then kissing. Kissing kissing kissing. He stands up and holds out his hand, so we can shuffle down the slope of the roof and back in through my parents’ bedroom window. We’re barely inside when we start fumbling our clothes off, tasting each new revealed fragment of flesh like it’s our last meal. We fall onto the bed, naked, desperate for each other.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks me.

  I nod, pulling his face toward me, so he can’t see the doubt in mine.

  Afterward I whisper, “I love you” into his ear. He says it back to me. Then I watch him as he gets dressed and walks out the door. His shoulders are pinched, and I know if he turns around I will see tears in his eyes. So he doesn’t turn and say goodbye, or offer any lame platitudes like “Good luck in New York.” He just walks out the door and out of my life, forever.

  “Goodbye, Murphy,” I murmur.

  The pain will kill me. I’m sure of it.

  The doorbell rings, startling me enough that I knock over one of the sky-high towers of books that surround me. I’ve spent the entire morning sorting books into piles: to bring to NYU, to leave at home, to give to Danny, to donate to the Salvation Army. I leave in three days, and I don’t think that’s enough time for me to get through them all. Nancy occasionally peeks her head into my room and clucks her tongue in disapproval. “Ruby St. James, if you don’t stop messing around with your books and start in on your clothes, you are going to be one well-read, naked college freshman.”