Lies You Wanted to Hear

by James Whitfield Thomson

  A plump, tanned woman in a yellow tennis dress was standing by one of the stalls, listening, a concerned look on her face.

  The girl turned, her foot still in the sink, and glared at the woman. “Any man ever love you that much, fat-ass?”

  I left the bathroom. There was a nervous Leon Trotsky look-alike with a scruffy goatee and wire-rimmed glasses standing by the vending machines who I assumed was the abuser, but it could just as easily have been the paunchy fifty-year-old in the John Deere baseball cap playing a video game. I bought a cup of coffee at the take-out counter, my hands still shaking when I got back in my car. Eventually the man would murder that poor girl and stuff her body in a Dumpster. Or maybe they’d grow old together, locked in their grotesque dance.

  I got in my car and turned up the radio, John Cougar Mellencamp singing “Hurt So Good.” I lit a joint and felt the fever of anticipation; this was the first time since the affair began that Griffin and I would have some extended time together rather than a few stolen hours. We were going to meet at my house, then head off to an old inn in the Berkshires. Whenever I heard Mellencamp asking his baby to make it hurt so good, it sounded like a perfect theme song for Griffin and me. Maybe the girl in the bathroom felt the same way about her guy, some warped concept of love.

  Last week, Matt and I had the kids in the car when the song came on the radio.

  “What’s that mean, Mommy?” Sarah asked.

  “What, sugar pop?”

  “‘Hurt so good.’ Things that hurt you are bad.”

  “Yes, they are, but sometimes…well…”

  I pictured myself bent over a red vinyl chair next to the mirror in a motel room, watching Griffin spank my ass with a hairbrush.

  “Sometimes good things hurt a little, honey,” Matt said. “Like when I go away on my business trips and I miss you and Nathan and Mommy. When I call home and hear your voice, it makes me happy because you’re excited and you tell me what you’ve been doing all day, and I feel really good. But I’m kind of sad too because I wish I was there so I could read you a story and tuck you in bed and kiss you good night. So, that phone call is kind of sad and happy at the same time. It hurts me not to be with you, but it’s still good. You understand?”

  Sarah nodded. Matt was always coming up with stuff like that. He didn’t give me a smug look, but to me it felt like he was showing off.

  Two days before, I’d had another session with Carla, talking in circles, ready to leave ten minutes after I got there. I said Matt was too perfect. I was tired of trying to love him, tired of the burden of being loved. How could anyone live with all that devotion and understanding? The scale was tilted so far in my favor it felt like an unbearable weight, a fortune I was compelled to squander.

  “Matt embraces me,” I said. “I know it’s supposed to make me feel safe, but it’s suffocating. He wants us to melt into a giant blob of togetherness. With Griffin, it’s the complete opposite. It’s like he frees me to be myself.”

  Carla asked if I’d said anything to Matt about seeing a marriage counselor. I said I hadn’t, and she made me promise I would.

  ***

  Up to the moment when Matt came through the front door, I hadn’t worried about getting caught—caught was just a word, an abstraction like right or wrong, conveniently disconnected from my actions—and yet it’s clear in hindsight that I had gotten careless, almost as if I had wanted it to happen. When Griffin arrived, I invited him in, eager to show him the house, so stupid and cocky that I tried on the kimono he’d brought in a gift box; then we fired up the bong and one thing led to another. I was very stoned, coming down the hall with a wineglass in one hand and a beer bottle in the other; for a moment, I thought Matt was a hallucination, his head haloed in the light from the stained glass behind him. I handed him the beer. He didn’t look surprised or angry, and I thought then that he’d set me up, his entrance arranged for maximum effect. I begged him not to go upstairs, but he marched me ahead, his fingers so tight on my arm, they left five purple bruises. Griffin was standing at the top of the steps. It felt like I was in a movie, everything in slow motion, and I kept thinking I could fix it, just make the camera stop rolling and change the script entirely.

  Matt went in the bedroom and looked around and let out a cry like a wounded animal. He was bent over, clutching his stomach. I rushed to help him, but he threw me down and slapped my face. A searing pain shot through my skull as he coiled my hair in his fist. He raised his hand to hit me again; then I saw Griffin out of the corner of my eye, and there was a grisly, crashing sound, and my body seemed to fly across the room. I must have blacked out for a moment. When I came to, I was propped up against the bed with my legs splayed, the neck of the broken beer bottle near my foot. Griffin was standing by the fireplace with the poker in his hand; Matt was in the middle of the room with blood streaming down the side of his face. He gave Griffin a weary, disdainful look, then he reached in his jacket and took out his gun.

  “Take it easy, pal,” Griffin said. “I’m putting this down, okay?” He squatted and laid the poker on the hearth very gently, then stood up again and raised both hands.

  “Kick it under the bed,” Matt said, his voice cold and lethal.

  “What?”

  “Use your foot and slide the poker under the bed.”

  Griffin complied, never taking his eyes off Matt. I scrunched up my legs and tried to cover myself with the kimono.

  Matt turned to me, his eyes so sad I wanted to hold him. “I never had a chance, did I?”

  I couldn’t speak. I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true, one more lie before he finally stopped loving me. He put the gun back in his holster. Griffin was eyeing him warily, his back to the fireplace. I cowered as Matt took a step toward me and picked up the neck of the bottle. A drop of blood fell from his chin onto my bare knee.

  “Watch out for the broken glass,” he said.

  He glanced around the room as if he might have forgotten something, then slowly walked out the door. I called for him to wait, but he didn’t look back.

  Chapter 20

  Matt

  No one knows how they’re going to act in a situation like the one with Lucy and Griffin until it happens. Thankfully, most people never have to find out. Sometimes I think it was pure luck that kept me from turning it into a front-page story—Ex-cop shoots…I pressed a handkerchief to the wound above my ear and got in my car and drove to the hospital. The nurse in the emergency room asked me what happened, and I said I’d slipped on some wet tiles in the bathroom and hit my head on the edge of the sink. She had me lie down and shaved my scalp and put some ice on the cut to stanch the bleeding. The doctor was a young black woman with a clipped British accent. She picked two slivers of green glass from the wound but didn’t question my story. When she applied the antiseptic, my whole body shuddered from the pain. The doctor closed the wound with nine stitches and wrapped a bandage around my head. She wanted to keep me in the hospital for a few hours for observation, but I refused and signed the waivers to check myself out. The nurse cautioned me to take it easy and stay off my feet.

  It was dark outside. I got some clean clothes from the suitcase in my trunk and changed in the hospital bathroom. I felt like Humpty Dumpty, all stitched up and broken beyond repair. Images kept popping into my head—Lucy in the kimono, the bong and the baby oil and the hairbrush on the nightstand, the flash of green as Griffin swung the beer bottle, a drop of blood falling onto Lucy’s bare knee. I drove west on the Pike, intent on going to Connecticut to pick up Sarah and Nathan. I had no idea what I would say to Amanda and Thorny or where I would take the kids.

  I stopped at a HoJo’s near Worcester for a cup of coffee. Luck was with me, getting that far without wrecking the car. The next thing I remember is waking up in the backseat of the Volvo, shivering. The HoJo’s was closed. I found a packet of aspirins in my dopp kit and took three to ease the pounding in m
y head. I got off the turnpike at the next exit and went to an all-night diner. The waitress brought me coffee. She said there was a motel a half-mile down the road. I took a room and slept fitfully, my dreams dark and troubled, but each time I awoke to reality, I wanted the dreams back.

  In the morning, I drove back to my office in Brookline. Andrea, the flower shop manager, was working out front, making up a wedding bouquet. She winced when she saw me. My ear and the whole left side of my face were purple and swollen. I gave her the story about slipping in the bathroom, and she said “ouch” and touched my arm. I wondered if she believed me or was just being kind. I couldn’t imagine ever telling anyone the truth about what had happened. It made me understand why so many rapes go unreported. There’s too much humiliation, the details too sordid and degrading, people wondering if this was something you brought on yourself. The phone in the office rang, but I didn’t pick up. When I called the answering service, the operator told me my wife was trying to reach me.

  I went to the Holiday Inn on Beacon Street a few blocks from my office and booked a room for a week. I tried to do some paperwork, but my ears were ringing, and there was a stabbing pain behind my eyes. The packet of aspirins was empty. I went down to the gift shop and bought some more and came back to the room and fell asleep. When I woke up, it was seven in the evening. I took a shower and let the water run over my head. The bandage came off, and I dabbed the wound dry with a towel. The stitches pinched my skin together in a puffy, crooked line, and I didn’t bother to cover them again. The left side of my face was purple as an eggplant.

  I got dressed and went outside. The sky was hazy, the air turning cold. I walked and walked and ended up on the Esplanade. A tour boat was sailing slowly up the river, spreading its soft wake. I wished I could turn my mind off and make all those sickening images go away. I wondered when Lucy’s affair with Griffin had begun. Was it before or after she had found that earring in my shirt? Maybe that was why she had reacted so mildly, a two-minute show of indignation and a giant sigh of relief. I suppose it didn’t matter when it started. Either way, the earring gave her the perfect excuse to act out her fantasies and something to relieve her sense of guilt. I felt hollow as a gourd. Everything inside me had shrunk into dry, lifeless seeds. I rattled when I walked.

  Tomorrow or the next day I’d get in the car, go to the house, and do what? How would I act? What would I say? Would I fly into a rage or whimper and whine? Lucy would be remorseful, eager to make amends. She’d probably cry and tell me how sorry she was, and all the while she’d be thinking, Come on, Matt. Be honest with yourself. When was the last time I said I love you, let alone showed it? Think about it. We should never have gotten together in the first place. It’s like we jumped in a wagon and started rolling downhill, both of us knowing it would end badly but not knowing how to stop. You’re a good man, Matt, but you’re no fun. I want something else. I’m not saying what we had was all bad. We still have our two beautiful children. You have to believe me when I say I never wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through. Right now you probably think you can never forgive me. What happened in our bedroom was the scariest, ugliest five minutes of my life, but maybe it was a ghastly blessing in disguise. Now that it’s over, there’s no chance for illusions. We don’t have to pretend anymore.

  She left three or four more messages with the answering service. It gave me a sense of satisfaction, being in control, making her wait. I went to the house Monday afternoon and knocked on the front door. Lucy gasped when she saw me. She was still in her work clothes, red blouse and billowy black pants. Tears came to her eyes as she surveyed my face.

  I said, “Are the kids still at Katydids?” The day-care center.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll go pick them up and hang out with them for a while. Take them for something to eat.”

  She nodded again. “Matt, I—”

  “We’re not going to talk about it. Not now, not ever.” Until I said it, I had no idea that this was my plan. No idea if I would be able to hold myself to it.

  “Okay,” she said. I turned to go. “Matt, don’t you think—”

  “No!” I wheeled around and pointed my finger. “Don’t say one fucking word.” I liked seeing that she was afraid.

  “It’s about the kids.”

  “What about them?”

  “It’s just…I mean…your face.” She grimaced. “I’m afraid you might scare them.”

  “This is reality, Lucy. Our reality. The world we made for them.” But I knew she was right. It pissed me off that I hadn’t considered it. Did I think I could just show up at day care looking like Frankenstein? I glared at Lucy. “So what am I supposed to do? Wait for my face to heal before I see the kids?”

  “It’s up to you. I don’t feel like I have a say in the matter right now.”

  “That’s right, you don’t.”

  ***

  I made a vow never to spend another night in that house. I stayed in the Holiday Inn for two weeks, then found an apartment in Roslindale. It was on a busy street, the interior shabby, but I took it because it was furnished and available immediately and only a mile and a half from Lucy’s. The apartment was on the second floor above a bakery. The best thing about it was waking up to the smell of fresh bread and cinnamon buns. There were two bedrooms, a living room, and a big eat-in kitchen. The landlord let me put in a set of bunk beds, which the children loved. Lucy and I managed to hide most of our rancor from the kids. We told them we were having trouble getting along and had decided to live apart for a while. I’m not sure why we felt the qualification was necessary. We both knew the breach was permanent. Just to ease them into the change, I suppose.

  I wanted to have the children with me as much as possible. With all the traveling I did for my job, it was hard for me to stick to a regular schedule, so Lucy and I made one up on a weekly basis. Sarah and Nathan usually spent every other weekend with me and several weekday nights as well. Lucy had them for the long Thanksgiving weekend; Santa came to my place Christmas morning. I felt a sense of pride that Lucy and I had been able to make these arrangements without seeing a lawyer or a counselor. Nothing to brag about, but a far cry from standing in your bedroom with a gun in your hand.

  In early February I picked up the kids and drove them to my place. They had adjusted quickly to the new arrangements. Nathan was too young to understand what was happening, and Sarah had stopped asking when Mommy and I were going to get back together.

  “Cool bus,” Nathan said, pointing. He was two and a half and loved trucks and buses.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “A ssschool bus.”

  He was sitting in his car seat in back, Sarah up front beside me, holding Sundae the llama in her lap.

  “What color is the school bus, Natey?” Sarah said.

  “Well-wo.”

  She giggled and looked at me. “Well-wo. I love how he says that.”

  “Me too.”

  “Natey?” She peeked around the seat. “Do E.T.”

  He shook his head.

  “Come on, Natey. Pwease. Pwetty pwease.”

  “Ell-wee-ot,” he said in a scratchy voice. “Ell-wee-ot. E.T. phone home.”

  I cracked up.

  “I taught him that,” Sarah said.

  “That’s wonderful, sweetheart. Maybe we can get him a job in the movies.”

  Sarah and I laughed as Nathan said it again.

  We all went candlepin bowling that evening. I loved these times together. Just the three of us. Things seemed so much easier without Lucy, as if she didn’t belong.

  The next morning I took them back to her place. There were often details to discuss about schedules and finances, but I refused to talk about the breakup. We had settled into a stiff cordiality salted with my occasional sniping and sarcasm. Lucy rarely retorted. She seemed content to
let things work out slowly, but she had begun to grow frustrated.

  One day she said, “Matt, I know how angry you are. Okay, fine, get it out! Call me a slut. Say whatever you want. But sooner or later we have to talk.”

  “Not really.”

  “Arrrgh. Sometimes you can be so smug and self-righteous I want to scratch your eyes out.”

  “That actually might help,” I said, looking her up and down as if she were something I’d scraped off my shoe.

  She took the blow and didn’t strike back. I’d won that round, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before she started to forgive herself. Pretty soon she’d be rewriting history, telling me we were both to blame. I realized I needed to hash out an agreement while I was still ahead.

  As I was leaving Lucy’s house one morning, I said, “I just want to let you know. I’ve been thinking about getting in touch with a divorce lawyer.”

  “Okay.” I’d caught her off guard. “What brought that on?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. I figured we might as well get on with our lives.”

  “Have you considered mediation?”

  “You mean working with an arbiter?”

  “Yes, my friend Prissy from work told me she and her ex went to some guy in Cambridge. She said it was great. No lawyers bickering back and forth, wasting a ton of money.”

  She went on talking about the advantages of mediation while I stood there nodding, agreeing that it sounded like a good idea. But I had lost my train of thought. I felt like I’d been blindsided when she said Prissy, the way her mouth puckered, the little wrinkle between her eyes. She was all I’d ever wanted. I couldn’t imagine loving another woman the way I had loved her.

  Still loved her. Everything I had been doing since the breakup was a sham. My anger at her was real enough, but all I’d wanted was a sign, a little hint that she’d take me back, and I would have come running. It was such a revelation, so absurd and inarguably true, I actually thought about telling her. Then I saw something shift in her eyes and I realized she already knew. She’d known all along. Everything she had been doing since the breakup was calculated to make sure I kept my distance. She was humiliated by the way things had ended, but she wasn’t going to offer false hopes. I suppose you could say it was her gift to me. She was finally being honest, but that left me with nothing.