How We Learned to Lie

by Meredith Miller

  We climbed onto the bus and I leaned into the back seat, looking up at the blue sky and down at the reflection of bare branches moving on the water. There should have been a whole circle of red and gold around the harbor, but the hurricane had ripped it away. I looked over at Joan and she looked fine. Well, maybe a little grumpy and fed up with me, but that was normal.

  I just didn’t think about it.

  I’m looking out my window now, at the place where Joan just disappeared. There’s no curve here; Rockaway is nothing but right angles. It must be an hour since she made the corner outside, but I can still see the shape of her fading from the edge of the street light. And I can still see her there against the wall on Jensen Road, too. I’ll never stop seeing it, now that I know what I was looking at. Officer Kemp turned out to be the cop’s name, but I didn’t find that out until he’d forgotten it himself.

  Skipped, Beat

  Joan

  THE DAY OFFICER Kemp pulled up at the bus stop, I had the notebook in my backpack. It was the end of October, almost a week after the hurricane, but there was still a load of broken branches and trash all around the edge of the harbor. I got to the bus stop before Daisy, before anyone, and stood against the wall feeling my mother’s life against my back.

  She had a brother. He died, in the army, I think. At first I thought it was a boyfriend, but then I did the math on her age during the war. Also I realized the whole family wouldn’t be crumpled up with grief over just some boy my mom had a crush on. So. I had an uncle and no one had bothered to tell me. That was my family all over. Pick any corner in my house and shine a light in it, I’d find some fact that made one of my relatives into someone I’d never met before. Truth was their enemy.

  I didn’t even know his name or where he died. Did they send his body home to get buried? Was there a grave? Did Gramps go to visit it when we all thought he was playing chess with Mr. Johnson?

  “Joan Harris?”

  I hadn’t even heard him pull up. His car was sitting on the curve of Jensen Road with the light going around but no siren. All I could think was, if you’re a cop you don’t need to use flashers.

  I just nodded.

  “Your brothers are Arthur and Andre Harris?” Crap.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me how long your brothers have known Ray Velker.”

  “What? My brothers don’t know Ray. He’s in my grade.”

  “Someone’s distributing some dangerous drugs in the high school, Miss Harris. I’m sure you’ve heard something about it.”

  “No, sir. I don’t do drugs.”

  He switched gears so fast it took me a minute to catch up.

  “You’re all grown-up, aren’t you?” He ran his eyes over my T-shirt, and I felt like someone was smearing dirt on me. I kept quiet. What was I going to say? He put one hand against the wall next to my head.

  “Well, I hope your brothers aren’t involved. Don’t you?”

  He leaned his head so close to my neck I could smell the rancid cop coffee on his breath. I was so distracted by it that it took me a few seconds to feel his fingers on my belt loop.

  “I like girls like you,” he said. “You’re just born knowing things, aren’t you?”

  He tugged my belt loop and then pushed up his sunglasses so I had to look at him. There was nothing else in front of me but those empty blue eyes. They reminded me of icebergs and the titanic sinking, of an ocean so cold it couldn’t even carry sound.

  “You can’t do this.” Count that as the stupidest thing I ever said. He just laughed.

  “I guess I’ll just have to ask your brothers myself.”

  His face blotted out the harbor and the trees and the sun that I hadn’t even bothered to notice when I was standing there alone. The air in front of me that I hadn’t even bothered to breathe.

  “Joan!” Daisy’s voice came bouncing of the cement wall, and his ridiculous feet started flapping faster down the asphalt.

  The cop didn’t move. He kept his face right where it was and then laughed again, under his breath. It seemed like forever before Daisy yelled my name again and the cop took his hand off my jeans. I felt like my body didn’t belong to me anymore. I just wanted to get on the school bus without it, leave it there on the side of Jensen Road.

  The cop got in his car and drove off.

  “You rob a bank or what?” Daisy said.

  I stayed after school to talk to Mr. Tomaszewski about the dogfish. Daylight savings was over and it was almost dark by the time I’d been to my locker, gone to the library for a book about Aristotle, and headed home. The oak leaves had been down so long they were drying out, and the wet maple leaves had left ghosts of themselves on the sidewalk. The rest of the trees had been stripped bare by the hurricane. If Daisy had been there, we would have gotten off the sidewalk and walked along the edge of the road, just to kick up the dry leaves and hear the rustling sound.

  Even after that morning, I hadn’t learned to be scared. Not yet. I was so glad to be alone, I even took the long way home. Which was why I ran into Robbie behind the library. I was circling my conversation with Mr. Tomaszewski around in my head, trying to understand how it felt. And I was thinking about my mother’s brother, about the emptiness behind Gramps’s eyes and what my dad knew about it. Did Arthur know too? The world around me disappeared while I tried to imagine a life for that picture of my mother, the one on my father’s dresser. I tried to see her speaking and moving around the house, sad and angry or dreaming and excited by the world beyond the curve of Jensen Road.

  I didn’t realize anyone was behind the library with me until Robbie said my name. I woke up from my daydream and felt everything at once, the air going into my lungs, the size of the space around me, the distance between me and home. Robbie was by the bushes next to his car. I looked away at the library but it was empty and dark.

  “Hi, Robbie. You waiting for somebody?”

  He looked confused for a minute. Then he stood up and took a step toward me. “Where the fuck did you take Teresa?”

  A gust of wind blew through my insides like the hurricane had suddenly woken up again, but I kept walking. I just wanted to be in the road, in the traffic, in my own kitchen, with or without my mother. I wanted to be in the bottom of our boat with nothing but water on three sides and the sky on the other.

  “In the park? We just went for a smoke,” I said. “That was weeks ago, Robbie.” I took a few steps toward the corner of the building.

  “I brought her,” he said. “I would have taken her home. You should mind your own business, Joan.”

  He stood between his car and the side of the library, legs spread out and hands hanging loose, blocking the way out of the parking lot. I still don’t know if he was threatening me or if he didn’t even realize what he was doing with his own limbs. Either one was possible.

  “I wasn’t being nosy, Robbie. I was just being friendly. I like Teresa.”

  “Don’t bring her around the house. I don’t want Daisy hanging around with girls like that.”

  “Girls like what?”

  “Never mind, Joan. Just leave Teresa alone, right?”

  “Sure,” I lied. “Robbie, can I say something to you?”

  “You want a ride home?”

  “No, I’m good. Daisy needs you. He needs you to be okay. You’re his big brother.”

  “Hey, make sure you and Daisy don’t do any of that shit that’s going around school. I told him; now I’m telling you.”

  “Yeah, we won’t. What about you? The thing with your parents is already killing him, Robbie.”

  All of a sudden his back got very straight and his eyes cleared up.

  “Something you want to say about my parents, Joan?”

  “Never mind.”

  I didn’t want to walk past him, so I cut through behind the gas station, in the opposite direction from home. From the scrubby trees behind Dunkin’ Donuts you can see the traffic on 25A, but it can’t see you. I stood there and smoked a cigarette, tryin
g to guess where the people inside the cars were going.

  Did Robbie just want to get Teresa high and sleep with her, or was it worse than that? I couldn’t put him on a scale and weigh his intentions. I couldn’t measure the shape of whatever was wrong about him lately. According to Mr. Tomaszewski I just needed more information and a logical system. According to people like my mother and Daisy, I needed extra metaphors. I needed to appreciate the poetry of everything, even this shitty little patch of trees under the flat black sky. I was supposed to see the universal truth and beauty through the exhaust fumes and the selfish intentions and the greed.

  What I could see was this: Everything was more confusing than it needed to be. Everything would be simpler if Robbie would just go away.

  Daisy

  WE STILL HAD normal days. I was still pretending my mother would be home soon. I was still lying to Joan about her being gone at all. Robbie was still there the day I got home from school and smelled autumn. Things were rotting under the trees. The tree branches were just dark shadows poking into the sky. You wouldn’t know it was fall from the leaves turning because the hurricane had whipped all the color out of the world.

  I loaded some dishes and made some macaroni and cheese. Then I called Joan to tell her my mom was out and the National Geographic special was in Morocco.

  “Camels,” she said.

  “It isn’t camels; it’s mountains. Just come over.”

  “I don’t want to watch a show about sand. I want jellyfish.”

  “Morocco has beaches, Joan. Look at a map.”

  “Yeah, but no one ever films them. They just want to talk about spice markets and camels.”

  “You know you’re coming. We can’t know where we want to live until we see everywhere.”

  “I like it here.”

  “No, you don’t. This place pisses you off. I’ll make you hot milk with honey and ginger. I’ll let you tell me about jellyfish brains.”

  “Jellyfish don’t have brains, Daisy! That is my point, which just proves you don’t listen.”

  We ate the macaroni and cheese and Joan made coffee with cinnamon in it. Robbie came in and stuck his nose in stuff, like he couldn’t tell what it all was from the kitchen doorway. He leaned against the counter and smiled.

  “You two should get married before Mom comes back.”

  “Shut up, Robbie.” I walked into the pantry and stood there until the blush left my face.

  “You remember what I said, right?” I heard him say to Joan.

  Silence.

  “We made one good thing in this family.” He lowered his voice, but I could still hear him. “That’s Daisy. It’s my job to take care of him while my dad’s away. You think I don’t know that?”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re the man now.” You’d only know that was sarcasm if you’d been listening to Joan your whole life.

  “I know you’re more grown-up. Keep him away from that shit at school, you hear me?”

  I stayed in the pantry until he went back upstairs, then we ate at the table, in between the bills and the newspapers. When it was time, I got my grandmother’s blanket, and we brought some hot chocolate into the living room. While we were watching the Atlas Mountains, Joan took a No Nukes button off her jacket and stuck me with it.

  “Ouch! Joan, what the fuck?”

  “That’s it. You see that part where you flinched and felt pain and yanked your arm away? That’s all they have.”

  “All who has? What are you talking about, and why did you stab me, you complete nutcase?”

  “Jellyfish, Daisy. All they have is the flinching and maybe the pain, the twitching and pulling away. The part where you felt surprised and pissed off and betrayed, like why would my friend do that to me? They don’t have that. No brains. Just nerves.”

  “You could have just told me that. Psycho.”

  “Yeah, but you won’t forget now, will you?”

  “Okay, let’s make sure they never let you be a teacher. Where’d you get the button anyway?”

  “Nick gave it to me.”

  “Who the hell is Nick?”

  “Mr. Tomaszewski. He was telling me about this big demonstration in Battery Park. The cops tried to ride horses right over them while they were sitting on the pavement.”

  “When did Mr. Tomaszewski get to be Nick? That’s creepy.”

  “It’s not creepy. He talks to me like I’m a person. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Oh my God, he’s perving on you!”

  That was the moment. I should have said something right then, but all I was thinking about was me. She was looking right at me and saying only Mr. Tomaszewski talked to her like she was a person. It hurt. I didn’t think about Joan, or what she was missing or why she thought it would be so cool to have nerves but no brain.

  “Did Robbie go out?” she said.

  “I don’t know, Joan. Why are you so obsessed with older guys lately?”

  “Eww! I just want to know what he’s up to. So would you if you paid attention.”

  “Sorry. I was a little distracted by you being brainwashed by a teacher.”

  “See, if you have brains people can wash ’em, which is a drawback. Can’t brainwash a jellyfish. Anyway, you oughta know by now my brain is unwashable. I’m special that way.”

  “I bet if the administrators knew he was talking to you about peace demonstrations and giving you rides home, he’d get in trouble.”

  “The principal is your moral compass now?”

  “Okay, you want to talk about shit? Why are you so mad all the time lately? Are you still pissed at your mom or what?”

  “I don’t know, Daisy. Nothing adds up these days. I feel like I’m playing that game where you have to guess who’s giving the signals. Like everybody knows but me.”

  “Joan, you should forget about the Robbie thing. For real. Let’s go see where your mom stays.” Maybe I was trying to distract her. I don’t know.

  “I don’t know if I want to. I told you that. Why are you always hassling me about it?”

  I looked around the living room at the emptiness where my mother used to be. It was so wide and cold, our house felt like the windows were open all the time. Like the wind was blowing through the hallways and the walls didn’t matter anymore. There was no difference between inside and outside. I didn’t want any of that to spill over into Joan’s life. I didn’t want it to touch the two of us. I was up to my neck, drowning. But I still thought I could cling on to her and keep her dry at the same time.

  Worse, even after what happened when I tried to fix my mother, I tried to fix Joan, too.

  We did go to the city. We cut school, took an early train, and ended up squished between some old commuters playing cards. On the concourse at Penn Station, we were hemmed in on all sides by people in suits.

  We heard the rattle of the CC train and saw the rats scattering and the light in the tunnel. A guy was living at the end of the platform and another guy was playing the saxophone behind us.

  We got on the train and tried to stand up without holding on. Then we hung on to the pole and swung around each other.

  “Is your mother gonna be pissed at us?”

  “I don’t care.”

  I fell onto the seat, dizzy, and looked up at a tag made with a fat marker. It said, They still haven’t caught The Zephyr.

  “She already doesn’t like me, Joan.”

  We sped through a ghost station. A light like cathedrals was falling through the grating from the street and down the walls. Every inch of the place was covered with tags. I pictured the kids jumping down in there and climbing out again. Inhaling spray paint fumes and standing on each other’s shoulders while hot wind blew down the tunnels and over them. That light making them saintly while rats scurried around them and colors came out of their hands. That could be our lives, but it wasn’t.

  “Believe me,” Joan said. “My mother doesn’t think about you enough to dislike you. She doesn’t even think about me that much.”
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br />   The train screeched into Ninety-Sixth Street and the doors opened on the smell of piss and engine grease.

  Mrs. Harris’s building had a doorman and a guy working the old-fashioned elevator. We asked for her, and the doorman said no one with that name lived in the building.

  Joan looked out the doors at the wall and the park and then said her mother’s maiden name. “Jensen. We’re looking for Eva Jensen. She’s in 5B.”

  “Oh, of course,” the doorman said, and Joan laughed at him.

  He called up and said Joan’s name into the phone behind the desk. A little mouse shriek came through so loud we could hear it from where we were standing, then something lower. He pointed to the elevator.

  We told the elevator guy where we were going and he said nothing at all, just pulled his big lever and looked at the wall.

  There were two doors in the hallway, and Mrs. Harris was standing in one of them with one hand on her hip and the other on the door frame.

  “Joan, what the hell are you doing here?” she said.

  “Nice to see you too, Mom.”

  “See? That is the kind of thing people do. Force you into saying something and then blame it on you. You are worrying me, child.” She nodded at me. “Daisy. What’s going on with you two?”

  Joan moved in front of me. “I just wanted to see where you live.”

  “So why didn’t you call first and ask, like people? You know better than this. I’m a guest here.”

  Joan looked at her feet. “Can we come in or what?”

  “Yes, of course you can come in. Stop being ridiculous.” We’d been there a minute and a half and it was already a fight.

  “Do you want me to wait downstairs?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Harris said. “Come in and I’ll get you kids something hot to drink.”

  But it was Joan I was asking, really.

  When we came through the door of 5B, it turned out to be connected to 5A on the inside. The two front doors were both on one long hallway. There was light down to the left, and the sound of something classical on a stereo.