How to Tell a Lie

by Delphine Dryden

  “Because I’ve been stupid.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Allison said. “I promise.”

  “If you do that, Ally, you’re doomed. Thinking is what got you here. But it’s your decision, and I can’t stay anyway. I need to be somewhere at eight. So I’m going to go now and leave you to this.” Lindy was already gathering up her purse and coat, heading toward the door.

  “But wait— What? You can’t just leave.”

  “I’m certainly not going over there with you. And I told you, I have somewhere I need to be.”

  She looked happy and chic in her full-length silky black raincoat, with one of her own custom bags slung casually over her shoulder to add a note of color. Allison wondered what was going on in Lindy’s life, but knew her cousin would tell her in her own time and no sooner.

  Lindy paused with her hand on the doorknob.

  “Ally, don’t think. Just go. And whatever you do, don’t turn on the computer.” Allison looked at her laptop with a pang of guilt. She had indeed been planning to turn it on once Lindy was gone. “Just get in your car, drive over to his place, knock on the door and talk to him. You don’t have to move in with him. Just talk to him.” She smiled again and then she was gone, leaving Allison standing in the entry hall, perplexed and increasingly miserable.

  She looked around the tiny space, facing an onslaught of recent memories. Seth at the door, looking so determined. The way he had pinned her to the wall, kissing her as though it were the only thing in the world that mattered. Her clothes still lying in forgotten little heaps the next morning when she stumbled toward the kitchen, chasing the smell of coffee. Seth in the kitchen, wearing just his jeans, lifting her to the counter and kissing her awake.

  And then, from some recess of her mind, a memory she had all but forgotten. She recalled her parents sitting at the kitchen table in the house where she had grown up. She was sixteen at that time, awake earlier than usual on a Saturday morning, and when she went to the kitchen she had found them at the table, sitting opposite one another and playing fairly R-rated footsie. Her mother had been giggling, her father looked smug, and when she walked into the room they had both jumped away from the table like it was electrified.

  They had both still been in their bathrobes.

  Her mother had giggled again when her father walked by a few minutes later and squeezed her shoulder.

  A few months later, her mother was gone. The drunk kid who had taken her life was a classmate of Allison’s. His family moved away after his trial. She didn’t know where he was now. What his life was now. Whether he still thought about it every day, as she had done for the first ten years or so after it happened. Whether he ever felt like he was living in a time warp, unable to move forward past that one critical moment.

  He was sixteen years old then, and they had tried him as a juvenile. Her mother had been thirty-seven. Only five years older than Seth. She would be fifty-three now, if she were still alive. Allison still counted those lost years, every year at her mother’s birthday. But she thought perhaps her father had stopped doing that. He had adored her mother, Allison knew that. He still missed her. But he had recovered, and his memories now brought him more comfort than pain, because there was so much good to remember. He was no longer the devastated widower Allison had spent the last two years of high school grieving with, but because she had moved away from home she had never noticed that fundamental change in him.

  It occurred to Allison that she had been stuck for thirteen years on the way her parents’ marriage had ended—by tragedy. That one event had colored her view of their relationship, and she had never realized how wrong that view was until now.

  Because their marriage had never been a tragedy. Their life together wasn’t defined by the foolish mistake of one teenaged boy, but by all the wonderful times that had preceded that mistake. By family dinners and Christmases and even playing footsie under the breakfast table and giggling about it afterward. Her father drew on the strength of all those memories. He valued them because the time he’d spent with her mother was a precious gift, not the source of lifelong pain.

  Allison realized two things in the same moment. First, that her parents had just had sex either that morning she remembered or the night before, and she had interrupted a moment of post-coital affection. And second, that she had her car keys in her hand, tossing them lightly, reassured by their familiar heft and jingle.

  “Ally, don’t think,” she whispered to herself, and turned the knob. “Just go.”

  Chapter Seven

  A soft, insistent rain was falling as Allison parked at the curb in front of Seth’s house. It drenched her, even on the short dash from car to porch, but she hadn’t wanted to stop to pull her umbrella out from under the seat. She took the porch steps in two jumps and barreled up to the door before she could lose her momentum.

  “Hey.”

  Allison screamed, an undignified little-girl screech of alarm.

  Seth was sitting on the darkened porch, a forgotten book facedown next to him on the seat of the swing. She wondered how long he’d been sitting there not reading.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay.” She stood awkwardly between the door and the swing, not sure how to proceed. She had told herself to just go, and she had just gone. But now, she thought perhaps she should have given at least passing consideration to what she might say when she got there. “Um, I came over.”

  He seemed so calm, almost detached.

  “Mm-hmm. I’ve just been sitting out here watching the rain.”

  “It is kind of nice.” They were talking about the weather. Allison wasn’t sure that counted as actual talk.

  “Yeah, I like it when it’s like this. You want to sit down?”

  She approached and sat gingerly after he’d moved his book to make room for her. Seth had one arm draped along the back of the swing, and when Allison sat back he trailed his fingers through her hair, ran the tips along her shoulder. He seemed to be doing it absentmindedly, not purposefully. She couldn’t figure out whether she was actually welcome or not, forgiven or not. She panicked for a moment, wondering if it was already too late and he was just trying to find a nice way to ask her to leave.

  “So, your house looks nice. From out here, I mean.”

  “I like it. It’s a place to keep my stuff. Hey, you’re all wet.”

  “The rain’ll do that to you every time.”

  “Do you want a towel or something?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “If you have one handy. I guess. Were you going to invite me in, or anything like that?”

  After a pause, Seth replied, “I thought you might want a more gradual approach. Since the idea of coming over to my place seemed to scare you so much. I thought maybe you could work up to it. Spend some time on the porch the first time, then next time maybe you can look in all the windows. The third time you come over you can come into the entryway, but we’ll leave the front door open so you’ll feel like you have an escape hatch.”

  Escape hatch. The same term Lindy had used to describe Allison’s relationship with James.

  “I’m not looking for an escape hatch.” She said it a bit more severely than she’d intended.

  “Well. I was just kidding. But that’s good to know.” They sat awkwardly for a moment then Seth stood and held out a hand, raising Allison from the swing. “Let’s go get you dried off.”

  She let him lead her into his house, which looked more or less as she’d imagined. Books and more books and then a few more books on top of those. Whole shelves full of science fiction, with hardbound tomes on economics wedged in sideways on top of the mass-market paperbacks. Old textbooks vying for space with recent bestsellers. Furniture was Spartan but nice, and obviously chosen with comfort and longevity in mind. A lot of dark wood and chrome, not entirely in keeping with the very plain oak of most of the bookcases. There was a distressed brown leather sofa and loveseat
in the small living room, in a modern style that would accommodate just about any accessories the owner might care to display. Not that Seth had many accessories. The couches sat on a faded red Oriental rug. A flat-screen television hung on the wall, larger than Allison would have ever chosen for the size of the room. There wasn’t much else.

  It was a bachelor’s space, with the type of look that some might say needed “a woman’s touch”. Allison tried to figure out what kind of changes she, as a woman, would make. A window treatment? House plants? A smaller television?

  “I’ll get you a towel, hang on.”

  Seth disappeared through the archway that led from the living room to the dining room and parts beyond, and Allison automatically drifted toward the nearest bookcase to scan the titles. The books appeared to be in no particular order, other than loose groupings by size; all the small paperbacks were together, and the larger textbooks were anchoring the bottom shelves of the many bookcases. In between these two extremes, however, there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the arrangement. She wondered whether he knew approximately where each book was, or whether it might take him hours to find any given one he needed.

  When Seth came back after scarcely a minute, towel in hand, Allison was leaning sideways, reading spines, oblivious to his return. She jumped, startled, when he cleared his throat.

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to keep surprising you.” He handed her the towel, which was pale blue and had seen better days. It smelled pleasantly of fabric softener and was obviously fresh from the laundry.

  “Thanks. That one was my fault, I tend to get pretty absorbed when I’m reading.” She had bent over, flipping her hair down to dry it more easily, so the last half of her comment was slightly muffled.

  “Even when you’re just looking at titles?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” She stood up, flinging her hair back, and rubbed the towel ineffectually over her sweater. Only time or a tumble in the dryer could really help, but pretending to dry herself gave Allison something to do with her hands. She felt grateful for any help she could get in appearing less nervous.

  “Do you want something to drink? Some hot tea, maybe?” Seth seemed only slightly more comfortable than she was and she found his anxiety oddly endearing.

  “That would be great. So are you going to give me the grand tour?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Not that grand, I’m afraid. But I like it. Here, let me put the water on. It’ll take longer to boil than it will to show you the house.”

  The kitchen was through the dining room, a space that was currently being used as a study. The dining room featured fewer books, because the original built-in cabinets were still in place. The cabinets appeared to be housing primarily office supplies, along with a slightly tatty china tea service and a handful of beautiful art glass vases that seemed right at home in the bungalow setting. There was a table large enough for dining, but only four dining chairs were in evidence. Space had been made for a wheeled leather desk chair, and a laptop and stacks of papers were occupying most of the table’s surface. So much for her image of the scruffy computer desk and Spartan task chair.

  “Through here. Sorry, I have dirty dishes in the sink.”

  There were only a handful of dirty dishes, apparently from a recent meal. The rest of the small kitchen looked tidy and spotless, the realm of either a compulsive cleaner or a man who didn’t spend much time in the kitchen. It was obvious the space had been extensively updated, possibly with some structural changes to increase the size. Allison noticed, with envy, that the small black range was an Aga. There were black granite countertops and the cabinetry looked freshly painted, with new hardware in a simple style but made of a sleek brushed nickel that gave it a contemporary edge. She wondered if the kitchen had been renovated by Seth or a previous occupant.

  “I think all I have is some Earl Grey. My mom likes it, so I usually try to keep some.” He rooted around in the narrow pantry and unearthed a box of tea bags, one of which he hung over the edge of the public radio donor giveaway mug he had pulled out of a cabinet stocked with similar mugs and an assortment of plastic cups bearing the logo of the university. Allison had expected Seth would microwave the water for her tea, or maybe boil it in a pan. Instead, he clicked the gas on under a kettle that seemed to have a permanent residence atop the tiny stove.

  “So this is the kitchen. You’ve seen the living room and dining room. Let’s go this way, through here.” He held out his hand and she took it automatically, relishing the warm feel of his skin against hers even in that limited contact. He curved his fingers through hers and squeezed gently—handholding with intent. They smiled at each other, still hesitant, and then the moment passed and he led her through the other door from the kitchen back out to the hallway that ran down the middle of the first floor.

  On the opposite side of the hall from the living room, one of the original bedroom doors had been replaced with a French door, and the room looked as though it had been rebuilt into an actual study at some point. More built-in cabinets and bookcases, these clearly not original, spanned one wall and framed the window and a low window seat with more cabinets beneath. Aside from the built-ins, the room was empty.

  “This is kind of cool. Why do you work out of the dining room?”

  Seth shrugged. “I just haven’t gotten around to getting a desk.”

  “It would have been my first priority, I think. The idea of having a study is so great. This was all like this when you bought it?”

  “I got really lucky. It was a foreclosure. This was about two years ago, and I was renting a house just down the street at the time. I knew this place was empty. One night when I’d just started seriously looking for a place to buy, I happened to drive by right when the HUD guy was posting the foreclosure notice on the door. The guy who owned it before was an investment banker. He and his wife had all this work done to the place, and then she ended up leaving him for the contractor.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. It was sort of sad. He went into a terrible depression after she left, lost his job and couldn’t keep up with the payments.”

  “How did you find out about all that?”

  “The neighbors told me everything after I moved in. They liked her, but they never liked him. I get the impression he was sort of an asshole. And just a bad neighbor. I’m a little better, because I mow my lawn fairly often and I don’t steal people’s newspapers.”

  “Good neighbor,” she agreed.

  “So down here,” he said as he led Allison back down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen, “is the guest room. I haven’t had any actual guests, but I’m ready for it if it happens.”

  He was ready in a loose technical sense. There was a bed with a mattress pad but no sheets. It had two pillows and a blanket slung over it. Venetian blinds screened both windows. A cheap floor lamp provided the room’s only illumination.

  “It’s very…adequate.”

  “Thanks. I said I’m ready for guests, I didn’t say I was encouraging people to stay.” He squeezed her hand again, rubbing his thumb against her palm and looking down at their entwined fingers. “Show you the upstairs later, or now?”

  “Well, you could just show it to me now, as part of the tour, but then the water will be boiling after that so—”

  “Right. Time limit. Smart. I like the way you’re thinking.” He pulled on her hand eagerly, tugging her back along the hall and then up the rather steep switchback stairs. She could just hear, as they passed the kitchen, the kettle starting to tick and rattle, reassurance that it would heat up and blow the whistle on their tour of the master bedroom. Why she should feel so nervous about that now, Allison couldn’t say. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t seen everything, done everything, already. But the idea of sleeping together at his place, at his house, seemed entirely different. More serious. Not her own territory.

  Seth, meanwhile, seemed gleeful about his own territory. At the top of the stairs was a broad landing with o
ne door straight ahead and a linteled archway to either side. He led her first through the one to the right. It was not a bedroom, as she had expected, but what seemed to be a dressing room. There was a wide upholstered bench in the center of the room. Full-length mirrors hung on one wall, flanking a long vanity with a sink. On the other wall were two doors and since one was open, she could see it was a closet. Seth was busy pointing out the floor.

  “I wouldn’t have been able to afford to get most of this done myself, but it’s pretty amazing. See? They had the original floors restored, and then this over here is actually salvaged wood they got to match it. They did some major structural work to turn this floor into one big master suite with a bathroom, instead of two little bedrooms and a half-bath. Part of it’s built over the addition where the kitchen is, so it’s a lot bigger than the original space. Here, look at these closets. I don’t even care about closets and I think this crap is amazing.”

  The walk-in closets, which had probably been designed as “his and hers”, were enormous and elaborately fitted out with drawers, sliding rods and a variety of other costly-looking custom details. The work was done in what appeared to be oak, with hardware that looked like brushed steel or aluminum.

  “It’s like something from a magazine. Is this really just sitting here empty?” Allison had to stop herself from gaping openly. Seth’s clothes, shoes and other things occupied only a scant half of one of the large closets. The other, slightly larger space was completely devoid of clothing or shoes. She thought of her own tiny closet and tried to imagine having so much space to spread out in.

  “I don’t have all that much stuff.”

  “I can see that you don’t. Is that the kettle?”

  “No, it’s really loud, you’ll know when it goes off. Come look at this.”

  Back out to the landing and through the only proper door was the master bathroom, which had also benefited from the unfortunate investor’s remodeling efforts. Slate, glass tiles and more oak. Simple design but rich materials made the space, though clearly modern, blend seamlessly into the Craftsman-style architecture. There was a second door that Allison assumed connected directly to the bedroom. She glanced at it then turned away to study the tile more closely.