by Lisa Tucker
Billy had a bedrock belief that all his children were brilliant, including William, despite what his teachers said about him being slow. He wanted William moved out of that elementary school and put in a better school where his talents would be appreciated. They didn’t have the money, or at least Ashley said they didn’t. Billy thought they should make their son’s schooling a higher priority. Lila knew it was one of the many things they’d argued about.
Obviously it wasn’t important anymore what Lila had or had not taken in high school. She’d graduated college summa cum laude and finished her PhD; no one would ever ask to see her high school transcript now. But still, if that transcript was wrong about her taking two semesters of theater, why? And was it wrong about the other courses, too? Had she really finished so many classes in her first year of high school? This would have required her skipping study hall and skipping lunch, too, which was what she’d always thought she’d done, but only because she’d believed the transcript. Didn’t she remember eating lunch with Billy that year? He’d tested out of a lot more courses than she had, and he’d never been opposed to skipping a class, but she had been. This was one of the reasons Billy always called her Gallant, because she was too law-abiding to break any rules.
She was still trying to remember if she’d really eaten lunch with Billy or just imagined she had, when Patrick finally opened his eyes.
“Your mother is still alive, isn’t she?”
“What?”
“You heard me, Lila.” He wasn’t looking at her, but at the wall of books behind her. He sounded furious. “Answer the question.”
She pulled her legs up and put her arms around them, curling herself into a ball. Her voice became small, too. “Why are you talking to me this way?”
“Because I know you lied to me about this.”
She wondered how he knew, but she was afraid to press him when he was already so angry. “Then why ask me?” she said slowly.
“Because I’ve realized I deserve to hear the truth.”
“The truth is… I don’t know if she’s alive.” She hugged her legs tighter. “I haven’t seen her since I was teenager. When I told you she was dead, it was because she was dead—to me and Billy. We had to do that or—”
He raised his hand palm out like a stop sign. “I only want to hear why you lied about it to me.”
She felt light-headed suddenly, but she managed, “Because I promised Billy I wouldn’t talk about this to anyone. He was afraid if—”
“So you didn’t tell your husband because your brother didn’t want you to. Of course. How could I have forgotten that a promise to Billy could never be broken?”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Patrick had almost never been sarcastic in all the years she’d known him. And the look on his face was so bitter; she was actually a little frightened.
He didn’t answer. He stood up and walked across the room toward her, and then over to the window, and then to the doorway that led to the kitchen, and then down the hall, and then back to the chair where he’d been sitting. But he didn’t sit down; instead, he continued pacing around the room, circling their apartment like a predator circles its prey. Or like a man who is so hurt that he doesn’t know how to talk to his wife about his feelings? Lila felt like prey, but she forced herself to think about what her husband must be going through. She knew from talking to his father that his mother’s death had devastated him. If he felt as though Lila no longer understood that loss, he would feel both betrayed and horribly alienated.
“Patrick.” When he didn’t stop pacing or look at her, she swallowed hard. “I know how this must seem to you, but I do understand the agony of losing a parent.”
“Of course you do. Even though your mother is alive and living in New Jersey, while mine has been dead and buried for twelve years. But you and Billy pretended your mother was dead. And pretend is all that matters, right?” He shook his head. “The stories are just like reality. You’ve said so a hundred times.”
Lila’s stomach lurched at the news that her mother was not only alive, but living so close to them. New Jersey? What was her mother doing there? And how could Patrick know this? She pulled the blanket off the back of the chair and wrapped it around herself as she wondered if it was possible he was wrong.
After a moment, she forced herself to concentrate on her husband. The light from the living room lamps seemed dimmer, the first sign that her pill was taking effect. But she opened her eyes wider, determined to stay awake and tell Patrick the truth. “I really do understand because my father died. When I was eight years old.”
Patrick finally stopped pacing, which Lila took as a good sign. But then he said, his voice shaking with anger, “So you lied about that, too?”
“What do you mean? I never talked about this with you before.”
“Yes, you did. Can’t you even keep track of your lies? You told me he died in the same car accident as your mother did when you were—”
“No, that was my stepfather. My real father died when I was a child, and I missed him every day.” This wasn’t completely right. Billy missed him every day, but Lila didn’t remember him well enough to miss him with such intensity. But she knew he was a good man, nothing like their stepfather. He built them a tree house. He taught them to swim. He gave them bear hugs when he came home from work. She could still hear him asking, “What have my twins been up to today?”
“So the guy who worked at the bank was your stepfather,” Patrick snapped. “Thanks for telling me this now, eleven years too late. What did your real father do? I’d appreciate the truth for a change.”
Lila hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Patrick to know, but that she didn’t want to say the words aloud. She’d tried so hard not to think about this since Billy’s death. She was sure it was meaningful somehow, but she wasn’t ready to face that meaning yet—if she ever would be.
“Fine, don’t tell me. Why should I know? I’m only your husband.”
“He was a police officer,” Lila whispered, hearing the words “suicide by police” for the thousandth time. “His name was William. He was killed in the line of duty.”
“Are you saying if I look up records, I’ll find an officer named William Cole who died in the line of duty? Because I can’t stand any more lies, Lila.”
She said yes and pulled the blanket up to her neck. Her father was the truest part of her history, the part before all the bad things happened. His name was William Cole. She remembered his shiny badge, the gun he always put on in the morning before he left for work. She even vaguely remembered that day in November when he went to work and never came back. She wasn’t sure exactly how old she and Billy were when they were adopted by their stepfather and forced to use his last name, Duval. Billy changed their name back to Cole when he forged the documents. “The first step toward our freedom,” he’d said. “Obliterating the evidence that we ever had anything to do with Harold Duval.”
Patrick finally sat down on the other end of the couch. He was looking straight at her. His gaze made her nervous, but she didn’t look away. After a long, uncomfortable silence, he said, “Did you ever love me, Lila?”
“Of course.” She felt tears spring to her eyes. Why was he asking her this? What was happening? “I still love you. I’m just not doing very well. I’m sorry.”
He ran his hands through his hair. “Then why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”
“I wanted to, I really did. But at the same time, I was trying to put all that behind me, so I could have a new life with you. Billy said it was the best way, because—”
“Billy said, Billy said, Billy said. Christ, did you ever do anything he disagreed with?”
Lila was stunned that he sounded so angry saying Billy’s name, as if he’d completely forgotten what had happened to her brother, as if he’d even forgotten what was happening to Lila herself since Billy died. Or was it that he didn’t care anymore?
Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil
angel but Love.
You’re nothing but a stupid little mouse.
She shook herself to stop the drowsiness that was creeping into her body and her brain, to focus only on her husband and what was happening here. But it was as if the Patrick she’d always known had disappeared and in his place was a man who didn’t love her or even like her. She pushed her fingers against her eyelids, willing the tears not to fall. Finally she said, “What difference does it make now?”
“It makes a difference to me. I want to know if you ever told me anything that he didn’t want you to.” Patrick exhaled. “Even one time will do.”
She could tell this was crucially important to him, though she couldn’t understand why. Billy had never told her what to say to Patrick, unless it involved their past. And yes, she knew it might seem strange—from the outside—that she’d gone along with Billy on this, but she’d always thought her husband understood that Billy wasn’t just her brother; he was a part of herself. Of course she trusted Billy. She also needed his advice because he was the one who remembered everything and understood what it all meant and, most important of all, knew how they could overcome it and be happy. It was Billy who’d convinced her that they were doing nothing wrong, that Americans had always left their pasts behind to set out for new lives. Billy said it was not only the central theme of American literature, but also the promise of the American dream—that we can reinvent ourselves however we want. True, most of these reinventions failed spectacularly, at least in American lit, but Billy said it would be different in their case. They would live so well as adults that their past would no longer matter, or as Billy said, quoting Emerson: “All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history, only biography.”
When Lila didn’t answer, Patrick said, “Just tell me one time when you chose me over him. One time, and I’ll let this go.”
The way he’d rephrased his request was so odd that Lila just stared. Her mind felt heavy and stupid from the sedative, but didn’t Patrick already know there had been dozens of times that she’d done what he’d wanted rather than what Billy had? Their trip to Europe, to give only one example, had put her in the position of having to explain to her brother that they couldn’t spend their vacation together at the shore, even though Billy wanted this so badly he’d saved up to pay for the house rental himself that year. Billy had been disappointed, but he’d said he understood that her husband’s plans came first. Patrick even knew about that conversation, because he was there when she got off the phone with Billy.
She was thinking about that summer when it suddenly dawned on her that it had been the last chance she’d had to spend a full week with her brother and his family. This was right after he moved to Harrisburg. Maybe if they’d gone with Billy instead of to Europe, she would have known something was wrong and been able to help him. Maybe he’d still be alive.
She was crying softly when Patrick stood up and went into the bedroom. She would have felt panicked if the sedative hadn’t been dulling her reactions. Something terrible was happening. What had she done wrong? If only she weren’t too tired to figure it out.
But as she stumbled down the hall, she heard him crying, too, and she thought she knew why he left the room. Her husband almost never cried and when he did, it always embarrassed him. She came into the bedroom, ready to hold him, though she knew she probably couldn’t say anything that would be comforting. She needed to sleep and forget about everything. Tomorrow, she would try again to find out what was upsetting Patrick.
When she saw their suitcase lying open on the bed, her first stupid thought was that he was going to a math conference. After it dawned on her he wouldn’t be doing that in the middle of the week before finals, she slumped down on the bed, thoroughly confused, and took one of his shirts out of the suitcase, his blue-and-yellow plaid button-down. He’d bought it last September when they were shopping in Center City. Every year, they went shopping before the fall semester started. It was their annual ritual, and something they’d joked about, saying if students got new school clothes, teachers should, too.
She hugged the shirt to her chest and watched as he packed a few pairs of pants, three other shirts, a handful of underwear and socks. When he went into the bathroom and came back with his small toiletry case, he’d stopped crying. He put it in the bag and zipped up the suitcase without asking for the blue-and-yellow plaid shirt back.
“I’m going to check into the Marriott across the street from Dannerson. I’ll leave you their phone number.”
She was so tired now that his words seemed to come to her from underwater. “The Marriott?” she mumbled. Patrick liked individually owned hotels, not chains. Maybe this wasn’t real? It felt so real, though. The shirt she was holding smelled like the light starch Patrick always asked for at the dry cleaner’s. She associated this clean smell with him.
“I’ve put up with a lot, Lila. The last month has been unbelievably stressful. You can’t go to work. You won’t let any of your friends help you. You’ve refused therapy. You won’t even drive your car or answer the phone. I’ve tried so hard to help you through this, and I would keep trying forever. But it doesn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference to you.”
“It does,” she said, into the shirt. She was lying down now; the shirt was pressed against her face. The lights were bothering her. It was so hard to keep her eyes open.
“In what way? Tell me one thing that’s different with me here.”
She wanted to say that his breathing next to her at night gave her a reason not to kill herself, but she couldn’t form the words, and she wouldn’t have said that anyway, for fear he’d have her hospitalized. The therapist had told them both that if Lila expressed any suicidal impulses, she should be taken to the ER and admitted to the psych ward immediately. While she was thinking how to answer, she fell asleep for a second or two, but then she forced herself to sit up and tried to smile, hoping to show him that she wasn’t crazy; she was a normal person, with all the normal needs. She even raised her finger the way he liked, to indicate she was making a point he couldn’t disagree with. “You bring me food.”
He flinched and she vaguely sensed she’d done something wrong. But what did he want her to say? She’d already told him she loved him. “I love you,” she said again, but her voice wasn’t cooperating. It was so quiet. Or maybe he wasn’t listening?
“I’ll order groceries in for you. Unless you decide you can drive your car. Though mine is destroyed, I’m going to leave yours here and take a cab.”
“The Rabbit? What—”
“I have to go. I still have a stack of homework to grade and two finals to prepare.” He looked at her. She was lying down again. She didn’t want to, but her head was so heavy, she couldn’t hold it up anymore. “And you obviously took your sedative sometime in the last half hour, when I was begging you to be honest with me.”
She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she’d taken the sedative before he’d gotten home, but all she could manage was, “Not then.”
“But it’s not your fault, Lila.” He sounded so calm suddenly, like his usual self. Her eyes were closed, but she reached out her arm for him, hoping he would come back to the bed and lie down with her. They could sleep until morning, when she would realize this had been another bad dream. Like the dream she kept having about the deafening explosion and Billy screaming and her being frozen with fear, unable to get to him. There was blood all over the place, but she just stood there: not crying, not yelling for help, not saying anything. When she woke in the morning, she knew it wasn’t real because she hadn’t even been there. She couldn’t have helped her brother.
She heard her husband’s voice but it was so far away, like he was talking from another country. Or from New Jersey, where her mother was alive? That was the part that made her suddenly sure none of this could be real. Patrick had nothing to do with her mother. He was the most important part of the better life Billy had always promised her. He was kind and bril
liant and completely ignorant of all the terror of her past. She had always protected him from knowing. It was the right thing to do, so he could stay just as he was: a beautiful soul.
“I hate leaving you like this,” Patrick said. “If I honestly thought that my being here was doing anything for you, I’d stay. But the person you really loved is dead and I can’t bring him back. It’s not your fault that it was never me.”
“Patrick isn’t dead,” she whispered into her pillow. “It’s just a bad dream.”
Then she fell asleep so deeply that she didn’t hear her husband leave and she barely cried out when the gun exploded and Billy was screaming and screaming for her to do something, but she couldn’t do anything because she was so worried she was going to get in trouble for ruining her special dress, the one she was supposed to wear to her daddy’s funeral that her mother said made her look like an ugly little mouse.
CHAPTER TWELVE
All day on Friday, William was as nervous as that morning in the tent, when Daddy left him alone as part of the Challenge, but this time he was not going to mess up. When the teacher said they had to study for their spelling test on Monday, he opened his book and wrote the list of words, even though he knew he wouldn’t have to take this dumb test because he wouldn’t be here on Monday or ever again. Pearl had told him that at Aunt Lila’s, they would go to private school, where everybody was rich and they gave you great hot food for lunch every day, even french fries, his favorite. Plus, she said, some private schools don’t even have grades, which wouldn’t matter for Pearl because she got straight As, but would be great for William, since he got mostly Us for unsatisfactory. The only subject he was good at was math, but Pearl reminded him that Uncle Patrick was a mathematician and maybe he could work it out so William could take a lot more math and a lot less spelling and writing. Spelling was the thing he hated most, but he forced himself not to grin when the teacher said he’d have to study at home a lot if he expected to pass this test without having his book available as a crutch.
