Lying with Strangers

by James Grippando

  “Try telling that to the director of my residency program.”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “I know. You’re right.”

  “It’s funny,” he said. “The worst part about this is that it has me thinking that maybe I’m not as good a writer as I thought I was.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. When I was writing the book, I guess I deluded myself into thinking that the real-life inspiration for some of the characters wasn’t quite so transparent. But obviously I was wrong.”

  “Don’t let Ira make you second-guess your writing.”

  “It’s not just him. It really started with something that happened at Booklovers’ the other night.”

  “What?”

  He paused, still not ready to tell her how scary the heckler had been. “One of the people in the audience suggested that I had revealed myself through my writing.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “To be specific, he said my wife was all over the book.”

  Peyton made a face. “Me?”

  “I had the same reaction. But after Ira accused me of defaming him, I started to think. Maybe on a subconscious level I did draw too much from the people around me.”

  Peyton suddenly felt stiff in his arms.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s my lead character, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes,” she said quietly. “You wrote a story about a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman who happens to cheat on her husband.”

  “And it’s just a story.”

  “Right,” she said. “Just a story.”

  “Except for the beautiful, intelligent, and successful part. That’s clearly my wife.”

  “There you go. Three out of four. I guess technically I am all over your book. And I have no plans to sue or fire you. So just tell Ira Kaufman to go to hell.”

  He smiled and held her close. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He held her for another moment, still feeling guilty for not having told her how crazy that guy at Booklovers’ had really been. It was for her own good, he told himself, though he knew that rationalizing was a handy way to justify concealment of just about anything.

  Even Sandra Blair.

  “Good night, love,” he said as he leaned across her body and blew out the scented candle.

  Three in the morning, and Peyton lay wide awake. She was thinking about Kevin’s book and Gary’s accusations. It seemed strange. Two men, one her husband, the other her first love. Both had made up stories about her. Both had cast her as an adulteress.

  She checked the clock once more. Time was moving slowly in the dark bedroom.

  If confiding in Gary about Kevin had been her first mistake, her second had been not telling Kevin that she’d gotten drunk, become sick, and ended up recuperating at Gary’s apartment. Now Gary was twisting the truth, making it impossible for her to come clean. She’d always considered herself honest, which only compounded her problem. She wasn’t sure what troubled her more, the fact that she’d concealed the truth from her husband or that she’d been able to rationalize it. Of course, those forced justifications were as old as lying itself. It was harmless. It would look worse than it really was. He was better off just not knowing. Those were just excuses, and they rang hollow.

  Not even the miscarriage had left her feeling this empty. She knew how lies between loved ones could change things forever. She’d learned that from her own family.

  It had been years ago. Peyton had been a teenager at the time. Her family was still living in Florida, just a few weeks away from their move back to Boston. Almost three months had passed since her mother had phoned her from the hospital to tell her that the baby hadn’t survived. Virtually not a word had been spoken about it since, at least not in Peyton’s presence. For Peyton, the conspiracy of silence had only made it harder to accept the death of a sibling she had never known. She’d needed some closure for herself. Before moving out of the house and returning to Boston, she wanted to visit her sister’s grave. On moving day, she’d caught up with her mother in the empty dining room as she was packing the family china into a cardboard box.

  “You can’t visit,” her mother had told her.

  “I just want to stop by the grave and say a little prayer.”

  “There is no grave.”

  “What?”

  “We decided on cremation.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of marker or memorial?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we didn’t buy one.” Her mother was almost robotic in her responses, never breaking the rhythm of her packing to look Peyton in the eye.

  “Aren’t you going to buy one?”

  “No. The ashes were scattered.”

  “Where?”

  She stopped and glared. “What does it matter?”

  “She was my sister. It matters.”

  “Fine. The ocean.”

  Peyton watched carefully. Her mother seemed flustered, almost angry as she wrapped the sugar bowl in newsprint and stuffed it into the box. Peyton moved closer and stepped on the stack of papers on the floor, preventing her mother from pulling out another sheet. Her mother looked up, and finally their eyes met.

  “I think you’re lying about something,” said Peyton.

  That was well over a decade ago, but the memory was very much alive for Peyton. The same feeling was twisting her into knots now. Granted, the situation then had been reversed. She had felt deceived rather than deceptive. But there was a strange commonality between lying and being lied to: they both seemed to drain the soul.

  Still wide awake, Peyton stared at the ceiling, wondering what had made her think of that ugly confrontation with her mother. She covered her eyes with the pillow, remembering what her father used to say to her when she was a girl—how things were always worse at night, that it wouldn’t be so bad in the morning.

  This time, she wasn’t so optimistic. Maybe that was the reason she resolved right then and there to call her father for lunch. He could make her feel better, even if she was too embarrassed to tell him exactly what was wrong.

  Or maybe she finally wanted to make sense of an old family lie that she’d never fully sorted out.

  28

  THEY MET FOR A SATURDAY LUNCH AT FUGAKYU, A POPULAR JAPANESE restaurant in Brookline whose peculiar name usually elicited an indignant “Excuse me?” from anyone unfamiliar with it. They shared the house specialty, salmon- and tuna-filled maki rolls. It was a small place where patrons at other tables could have easily overheard, so Peyton kept the lunch conversation light. Her father, however, had apparently sensed that something was gnawing at her. He was the one who suggested they go for a walk after eating. They strolled side by side up the wide and tree-lined sidewalk on Brookline.

  “Everything okay with you?” he asked.

  “No, actually.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  She kept walking, saying nothing for a few steps. “You mind if I ask you something personal?”

  “Why would I mind?”

  “Did you and Mom ever name the baby who died?”

  He almost tripped on the sidewalk. “No. Where did that question come from?”

  She stopped at a bench near the entrance to the park. “Sit for a minute?”

  He took a seat on the bench, but Peyton remained standing. “You don’t have to answer this, but there’s something I’ve wanted to know for a long time. And right now, where I am in my life, I need to know more than ever.”

  “What?”

  “Do you ever wish Mom had never told you the baby wasn’t yours?”

  His mouth opened, but no words came for several long moments. “How did you know it wasn’t?” he asked, barely audible.

  “I just knew. The way we moved out of Boston as soon as Mom started showing. The lack of joy in the house before the baby was born. Mo
m never did set up a nursery. It seemed there was always a cloud over the pregnancy. Then after the baby died, everything was just as hush-hush. Am I right?”

  He looked past her. “Yes. You’re right.”

  “Like I said, you don’t have to answer. But do you ever wish Mom had just never told you?”

  “I hate to admit it. But I guess knowing made it easier for me to deal with the way things turned out.”

  “Put that aside if you can. Just look at it from the standpoint of her infidelity. Would that be something you wish you had simply never found out about?”

  “Is this about me? Or is it about you and Kevin?”

  She tried to look him in the eye but couldn’t.

  “Did Kevin cheat on you?”

  “Dad, please. This is really hard for me.”

  He nearly growled. “Don’t tell me your mother was right about him.”

  “Nobody cheated on anyone. It’s more of a perception problem.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s too complicated. I just want to know how you dealt with it. In hindsight, are you glad Mom told you?”

  “All I can tell you is that I’ve forgiven her. That’s all that matters.”

  “Because she told you. Is that why you forgave her?”

  “No. That’s why we stayed married, but that’s not why I forgave her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Her contrition made it possible for my ego to get out of the way. But that has nothing to do with forgiveness. I forgave her because I loved her.”

  They exchanged a long, soulful look. Peyton took a seat on the bench beside him. She couldn’t help but think of all the times in her life she’d heard people say she’d inherited the brains from her mother.

  “You’re a very wise man.”

  He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Or just an old fool.”

  “Not in my book,” she said as she laid her head on his shoulder. “Not ever.”

  The summer’s longest heat wave was over. Sunday joggers were everywhere. Kevin and Steve Beasley had just finished a pickup game of basketball in the park and were cooling down, one shooting jump shots till he missed while the other rebounded. Steve was a second-year associate at Marston & Wheeler, a member of Ira Kaufman’s litigation team, like Kevin, but a few years his junior. They’d worked together on various cases throughout the year and had become friends to the extent of sharing lunch twice a week and shooting hoops every other weekend.

  Kevin took aim from the free-throw line. “No time on the clock. Tie ball game. Make this shot, and the Celtics win the world championship.”

  “Miss it and you buy me and my fiancée dinner at our favorite restaurant.”

  “Hope you’re not hungry.” Kevin let it fly. Off the rim.

  “Damn.”

  “Will that be cash or charge, sir?”

  “Depends on whether you and Jeannie want fries with your Happy Meal.”

  They exchanged a smile as Kevin took a seat in the grass just off the court. Steve toweled the sweat off his face and plopped down beside him. They watched in silence as a mother duck and five ducklings waddled across the court.

  “You want to get some lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll give Jeannie a call if you want to invite Peyton.”

  “Nah, Peyton’s at the library. Some research paper she’s working on with the chief resident.”

  “She puts in a lot of hours, huh?”

  “Comes with the job.”

  Steve opened his jug of Gatorade and took a sip. “Do you ever wonder—ah, forget it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not my place to say.”

  “Say what?”

  “I’ve debated whether I should say anything. But if it were me, I’d want to know.”

  “Well, now you’ve done it. Either you’re going to tell me what you were about to say, or I’m going to have to beat it out of you.”

  He took another sip. “All right. Remember a couple of weeks ago when Ira called you at the Waldorf and shipped you off to Los Angeles?”

  “Yeah. You filled in for me.”

  “Right. In fact, I just took your room, remember? We didn’t even bother with guest registration.”

  “So what are you trying to tell me? There’s going to be a room charge for a three-thousand-dollar hooker on my next AMEX statement?”

  “Actually this is pretty serious.”

  Kevin’s smile faded. “What is it?”

  “The morning after you left, Peyton called. She was looking for you. It was a strange conversation.”

  “In what way?”

  “I told her you were in Los Angeles and how I’d taken your room. I kept getting these long periods of silence after everything I said. She seemed distracted. And then toward the end of the conversation, I heard a man’s voice in the background.”

  “A man?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know who it was.”

  “Did you hear what he said?”

  Steve paused and nodded. “That’s what makes this so difficult.”

  “Just tell me what he said, damn it.”

  “He said, ‘Don’t be shy, I’ve already seen you naked.’”

  Kevin went numb. “Then what happened?”

  “She got flustered and tried to blame it on the TV.”

  “Maybe it was the TV.”

  He shot a knowing look. “It wasn’t the TV.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I can tell the difference in the sound.”

  Kevin looked away, unable to speak. It was as if some huge hand had reached up from his stomach, pierced his heart, and grabbed him by the throat. Then he had another thought and was immediately suspicious. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Like I said, if it were me I’d want to know.”

  “Did you discuss this with Ira?”

  “Of course not. It’s personal.”

  Kevin narrowed his eyes. “Did Ira put you up to this?”

  “What are you talking about? Ira has nothing to do with this.”

  “Two days ago Ira came into my office and threatened to fire me because he thought there were too many unflattering parallels between Marston and Wheeler and the fictional law firm in my novel. He told me to cancel the book or prepare for war. Two days later, his favorite young associate informs me that my wife is cheating on me.”

  “Do you think I’m making this up?”

  “My book is about a woman who cheats on her husband. Funny coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Look, I’m sorry I said anything. Just forget it.”

  Kevin rose and quickly packed his gym bag. “Forget it? Not for a long time.”

  “Come on. You’re falling off the deep end.”

  “I just can’t believe you did this.”

  “All I did was tell you something as a friend.”

  “A friend wouldn’t have waited two weeks to tell me, at least not if it had really happened. I know what this is about. Ira declares war, his soldiers go to battle.”

  “Now hold on.”

  “Nice to know whose side you’re on.” He threw his bag over his shoulder and headed for his car.

  29

  SUNDAY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HER DAY OFF, BUT SHE HAD VOLUNteered to help the chief resident with an article on the increasing incidence of adult-onset diabetes in children. Everything she needed was accessible from her computer. Articles, reports, studies, patient histories. Just a click of the button and they’d appear on her screen via the Internet or from a CD. For Peyton, however, it didn’t feel like research if, at least at some point during the project, she didn’t find herself in the silence of a library surrounded by real books.

  The hospital library was deserted, typical for a Sunday in summer. She was at an isolated carrel reviewing the online version of an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association Journal article on her notebook computer when an instant message popped up. She hated when th
at happened. Invariably she’d be in the middle of something important whenever one of those unwanted boxes would take over her screen with some silly message from a friend who just wanted to chat. The Internet may well have revolutionized communication, but in some ways it was a throwback to the old days of party lines, a time when you could just pick up the telephone, find out who was talking, and jump right in. Except that on the Internet, people could travel under any screen name they wanted.

  The instant message read, “hi. u there?”

  She didn’t recognize the sender, but people could change their screen names at will or even get more than one. Whoever it was, he was an experienced chat-room typist, all lowercase, letters and numbers substituting for words. Peyton was too much of a perfectionist for that. She typed, “Who is this?”

  “u wouldn’t come 2 me, so i came 2 u.”

  “Still don’t recognize the name.”

  “it’s new, like yours.”

  That only confused her further. On the advice of the hospital security director, she’d changed her screen name after the Johnson stalking episode, just as she’d changed her phone number, pager number, and the lock on her apartment. But that was months ago.

  “thought we could use a fresh start,” the message continued.

  That answered it for her. She wished he would go away, but it was clearly not going to be an easy break. “It’s not possible.”

  “y not?”

  “That’s just the way it has to be.”

  “how can u still feel that way after all this time?”

  “It’s hardly been any time at all.”

  “been forever. i been trying 2 win you back 2 long.”

  “Stop it. We’re not in high school anymore.”

  There was a long delay. Peyton wondered if he’d signed off. Finally, the response built on her screen, one letter at a time. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  Her fingers froze on the keys. No more cutesy chat-room typing. This was getting weird. “I know it’s you, Gary.”

  “It’s not Gary.”

  That chilled her. “Who is this?”

  “You got my rose, my message on your locker. You must know.”

  “Sure. I know it’s Gary.”