Lies You Wanted to Hear

by James Whitfield Thomson

  I was so agitated when I left his office I kicked a watercooler in the hall. It already had a few dents in it, probably from other men like me.

  I had two friends who had gone through contentious divorces. Randy Fallon was an old friend on the police force, and I remembered how he had complained about his divorce settlement. When I told him what Claxton had advised me to do, Randy said, “Your lawyer must be one in a million, not wanting to soak you for every penny. I paid mine over twelve thousand bucks and still wound up getting screwed.” Randy’s pension from the BPD was being garnisheed by the court for child support. He said the deal I was being offered from Lucy’s attorney sounded like manna from heaven.

  Craig Hildebrandt served on the TWT task force with Javi and me. He had been divorced twice. He and his first wife split amicably, no kids. Craig and his second wife had a little girl he adored, but the marriage was a disaster. His wife was an alcoholic who cheated on him with another cop. She got arrested twice for shoplifting. Craig fought for custody, but the judge let her keep the child as long as she provided the court with proof she was attending AA. “Your attorney’s right, Matt,” Craig said. “It’s not worth all the money and heartache. I was so angry for a while I swear I thought about trying to find someone to knock her off. But she found Jesus and things worked out okay in the long run. I’m not a big fan of all the religious stuff, but it helped her get her shit together. She’s actually turned out to be a pretty good mother.”

  I called Claxton and told him to draw up the papers. I can’t exaggerate the bitterness I felt when I signed them.

  ***

  In late March, a month after the divorce had been filed, I got a call in my office from Katy Bowen at Katydids, where the children went to day care.

  “Maybe it’s my mistake, Matt, but isn’t Lucy supposed to pick up the kids this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, hasn’t she come yet?”

  “Nope. No sign of her.”

  It was quarter to six. When it was Lucy’s night to have the kids, she usually picked them up no later than five. I asked Katy if she had called Garbo’s.

  “Yes, they told me she left around four. I called the house too, but got the machine.”

  “Okay, I’ll come right away and take the little monkeys off your hands.”

  It was Tuesday. I was supposed to have them tomorrow night and Thursday. My two weekday nights with Sarah and Nathan varied according to my work schedule. I made sure I spoke with Lucy in advance and kept Katy up to date. Either Lucy had forgotten it was her night or written it down wrong in her daybook. I hopped in my car and drove to Kaytdids, my tires slipping on the trolley tracks in the rain.

  “I have no idea what happened with Lucy,” I said to Katy. “It concerns me that she hasn’t called.”

  “Eh, she probably just got confused about the schedule. Happens with parents more than you think.” She laughed. “I’ve had to take my share of orflings home for supper.”

  I bundled up the kids and put them in the car.

  Sarah said, “How come Mommy forgot to pick us up?”

  Because your mother is a total fuck-up. You’ll figure that out for yourself pretty soon.

  “She just got confused, honey. We all make mistakes sometimes, even mommies and daddies.” Wasn’t that the way the experts said you should play it? Never belittle the ex to your children. I wondered how long I could keep up the charade.

  I took the kids to dinner at an Italian restaurant. Afterward, I drove slowly down Lucy’s street. I thought I’d see if she was home yet and knock on the door. The house was dark except for the lights in the third-floor apartment. I circled the block and decided to take the kids into the house and wait for her to come home. It would piss her off to have me invade her space like that, but I didn’t care. She had messed up again, and I wanted to embarrass her.

  I parked out front. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to get in. Chances are Lucy hadn’t changed the locks, and I still had a key for the house on my key ring. It was just like her not to ask for it back. The key fit, and I took the kids inside. I played with Sarah and Nathan till eight-thirty. Then I gave them a snack and read them a story before putting them to bed.

  Alone downstairs, I went into the study. Lucy’s desk was a mess. I poked around a little, trying not to disturb anything. In one of the drawers, I found a leather-bound journal, a diary of sorts. I glanced at one entry, which happened to be about Amanda, then put it back. I’m not sure if I resisted the temptation to stop reading out of some qualm of conscience or because I didn’t want to see what Lucy said about me. I wandered into the living room and sat on the couch. I started to read a Newsweek article about South Africa but couldn’t concentrate. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Back in the living room, I saw my car keys partially lodged between the couch cushions. I retrieved the keys and lifted the cushion to see if any coins had also slipped out of my pocket. As I was putting the cushion back in place, I noticed a small dark hole on the underside—an unmistakable cigarette burn that had smoldered deep into the stuffing. I wondered when this had happened. Lucy had bought the couch last summer when we were still together. There were smoke alarms in the house, but even so. I imagined myself barging into my lawyer’s office, holding up the cushion. What about this, Claxton? See this hole! Is this proof enough to get some judge to acknowledge that my children are in danger? Am I supposed to sit around and hope they’re lucky enough to be staying with me when she burns the fucking house down?

  “Daddy?” Sarah stood in the doorway with Sundae in the crook of her arm.

  I put the cushion back, burnt side down. “What’s the matter? Can’t sleep, sweetie?”

  She nodded.

  “You want to play a game of Parcheesi?”

  She smiled and nodded again and ran to get the board.

  “We gonna have a bet?” she said. She was not yet five but already fiercely competitive.

  “Okay, let’s see. If you win, you get another cookie before you go back to bed. If I win…you have to buy me a new car?”

  She giggled. “It’s a deal.” And put out her hand to shake.

  Sarah won fair and square. She ate the cookie, then I carried her back upstairs and tucked her in bed.

  “Will you stay here till I fall asleep?” she said.

  “Sure, I won’t move an inch.”

  She curled up with Sundae, and I smoothed her hair as she drifted off. I tiptoed out of the room. Outside Nathan’s open door, I stopped and listened for his soft, wet breath. The lights were off in Lucy’s bedroom, but the door was open. I hadn’t set foot in that room since I’d come to collect my clothes and personal belongings. I turned on the light and went in. The bloodstained rug was gone, but little else seemed to have changed. I sat on the bed. The faint smell of Lucy filled me with an unwanted sense of longing. I went over to her dresser and opened the top drawer where she kept her bras and panties. In the back, in its usual place, was her stash of marijuana. The fat buds were still a little green, a sweet odor oozing from the clear plastic baggie. I closed the drawer and gazed across the room. Lucy had put some new photographs on the mantel. Sarah in a princess dress, Nathan on a swing. The photo in the center, in an inlaid wooden frame, had been taken outdoors in the snow—Lucy holding Nathan in her arms and Griffin with Sarah on his hip. They were all smiling brightly, their cheeks rosy from the cold. A handsome, happy family. Lucy could’ve just as easily kept the old photo of the four of us and pasted a cut-out of Griffin’s face over mine. I turned the photograph facedown on the mantel.

  I heard the front door open.

  “Matt?” Lucy called from downstairs. “Matt, is that you?”

  “Be right down.”

  She was at the bottom of the stairs with her coat on. Griffin was behind her in a brown leather bomber jacket taking off his driving gloves. They’d brought in several fancy shopping bags and placed them on t
he floor by the coat tree.

  “Would you please tell me what the fuck you’re doing here?” Lucy said.

  “You forgot to pick up the kids at day care.” I gave her a sarcastic grin. “I thought I’d do you a favor and bring them home.”

  “I didn’t forget anything. I don’t know what kind of shit you’re trying to pull here, Matt, but it’s your night to have them. I could have you arrested for trespassing.”

  I was about to say how strange it was that Katy had made the same mistake I did, but I held my tongue. Lucy was about to flip out. I didn’t want to get in a shouting match and wake the kids. I had signed the divorce papers, but I still wasn’t ready to give up the fight. Of course, there were smarter ways to go about it than breaking into her house. What I’d done was needlessly provocative, and it would give her an excuse to shrug off her guilt and embarrassment when she finally figured out she was in the wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I screwed up.”

  She thought I was being snide. “I mean it, Matt. Next time I’ll call the police.”

  “No. No, you’re right. I’m sorry. It was stupid. My mistake.”

  She hesitated, suspicious of my quick capitulation. “Well…okay. But you can’t come in here like this. We’re divorced now. This is my house. The lines have to be clear.”

  “I know, you’re right. Here.” I took the house key from my key ring and handed it to her. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Everything’s cool,” Griffin said, a stupid smile on his face. He put his arm around her shoulder. His woman now. I wanted to grab him by the front of his bomber jacket, pick him up, and hang him on the coat tree. I tried not to let my animosity show on my face.

  I turned to Lucy. “You want me to get the kids and take them home with me?”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s perfectly fine if they stay here. I’ll take them over to Katydids in the morning.” It was ludicrous to see her playing the dutiful mother.

  “Okay, thanks. Excuse me. I think I left my jacket up in Sarah’s room.” I turned and took the steps two at a time. I went into Lucy’s bedroom and righted the photograph on the mantel.

  When I came back downstairs, Lucy held out the jacket. “It was in the kitchen,” she said, her eyes narrowed with suspicion, trying to figure out what I was up to.

  She followed me onto the front porch and stood there watching until I got in my car and drove off. She’d be a little spooked by what I’d done, but she’d look around the house, see that everything was the same, and forget about the whole thing in a day or two. That was my hope, anyway. What an idiot I was for not taking the kids home with me in the first place and calmly pointing out her mistake to her tomorrow.

  I stayed up late playing solitaire, thinking how much better everything would be if Lucy simply vanished. I didn’t wish she was dead, just gone. Out of our lives completely. Or the other way around. Maybe I should take the kids and run. Disappear. Start over. New names, new place, no more screwups from her to deal with.

  I wasn’t ready to cross that line, but it was time for me to get smart. No more grandstanding. It was foolish to put her on guard like I did tonight. From now on I’d play the part of the model ex-husband. The perfect co-parent. Easygoing, nonjudgmental, eager to compromise. I needed to win back her trust before I could violate it again.

  Chapter 23

  Lucy

  After Matt drove off, I came back in the house still holding his key. “Talk about weird,” I said to Griffin. “What the hell do you think that was all about?”

  “Aah, don’t sweat it. He’s just having trouble letting go.”

  We went into the kitchen. “He must have been looking for something. Or checking up on me. I need to get the locks changed. He might have another copy of the key.”

  Griffin uncorked a bottle of wine.

  I got my daybook from my purse. “Look,” I said, “Tuesday, ‘M’ for Matt. It was his night to have the kids.”

  “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Luce.”

  “I know. I just hate him accusing me like that. He keeps trying to make me out to be a bad mother.”

  “Come on, forget about it.” He handed me a glass of wine. “Time to celebrate. Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you.”

  My birthday actually wasn’t until Thursday, but Griffin was going to be out of town on a business trip, so we were celebrating early. His gift was to take me shopping. He picked me up after work and we went to a half dozen high-end stores where he watched me try on various outfits and lingerie, his eyes filled with delight when I came out of the dressing room looking like a model or a classy hooker. I could feel myself blushing as I showed off a lacy black teddy with a thong bottom. Bingo, he said, clapping his hands. I said, You just want to buy this so you can tear it off me. And he said, True, so true. The teddy cost ninety-eight dollars. Griffin delighted in spending money on me. Much as Matt loved me and occasionally bought me a thoughtful gift—a colorful wool shawl or a wide leather belt with hammered tin buckle—his first priority was to find a bargain. He couldn’t buy anything without considering the price first, not even an ice cream cone or a pair of socks. His frugality wore thin. It almost seemed like a birth defect—congenital cheapness—as if he’d been born with a cut-rate soul.

  Griffin and I took our wineglasses upstairs. As we walked into the bedroom, I said, “Matt’s been in here, spying on me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do. I can feel it. It gives me the creeps. Like there’s mold oozing over everything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You were great with him. Clear, straightforward. The poor bastard’s still madly in love with you. He’ll get over it in ten or twenty years.”

  We undressed and got in bed, the lamp still lit on the nightstand. I kept scanning the room, trying to see if anything was amiss, resisting the urge to check the closet and dresser drawers. I imagined a scene out of a creepy black-and-white movie, Matt taking a pair of scissors to my underwear. But that wasn’t like him. Tonight was an anomaly he wouldn’t repeat; I could see it in his face. For all his lingering resentment, he was, at heart, a rational, economical man, which is precisely what my lawyer understood when he proposed the divorce settlement. It was a deal Matt couldn’t resist.

  I turned out the light and snuggled up next to Griffin. He had been spending nearly every night with me since the divorce was finalized. His emotional support over the past six months was no illusion, and I was beginning to believe that he could love me—and stay. We were a couple now, no different from millions of others who had tried and failed before they got things right.

  The next morning Katy asked me if I’d gotten the schedule worked out with Matt.

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “His mistake for once.”

  “Really? I had it on my calendar that it was your night.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes,” Katy said. “I called him at the office and he came right over.”

  “Well, he wound up admitting it was him.”

  Katy shrugged. “I guess he gave me the wrong dates to put in my book.”

  I thought about rubbing it in the next time I saw Matt, but it was enough to watch him slink away last night like a petty criminal.

  ***

  Nothing said more about Griffin’s commitment to me than his relationship with the children. He thought they were a hoot, especially Sarah. She was a tomboy and a daredevil, always rolling and tumbling, begging to go faster and swing higher. Nathan was more of a watcher, a little timid and often cranky. I don’t think I fostered it, but he had a tendency to cling to me. Griffin and I bought a pair of bicycles with child seats on the back and took the kids for rides through the Arboretum. One Saturday morning he showed up with a trampoline in two big boxes. He carried the boxes out to the backyard and put it together with Sarah acting as his helper. R
ory the cat sat on the fence watching them like she was Queen of the May.

  “You guys ready?” Griffin was jumping lightly up and down on the trampoline. “I had one of these when I was a kid.” He sprang up effortlessly, did a back flip and landed on his feet, tried a front flip but couldn’t hold the landing. “Out of practice,” he said, laughing.

  “I want to do it,” Sarah said.

  I lifted her up. As soon as she got on, she started bouncing as high as she could, utterly fearless, while I stood there holding my breath, afraid she’d go flying off into the bushes. When it was Nathan’s turn, he walked around, unsteady on his feet like a little drunk, lost his balance and got up giggling. Falling down was the best part for him. Sarah and Griffin begged me to take a turn, but I wanted no part of it. Griffin bounded down and put his arm around me as we watched Sarah and Nathan knock each other down over again and again.

  My neighbor Nancy Prince, whose backyard was separated by a low wooden fence from mine, stood on her porch and waved. Nancy had an eight-year-old daughter and a teenage son who sometimes did odd jobs for me, raking leaves and shoveling the sidewalk. She and I didn’t talk much, and I had never discussed the breakup with Matt with her, but she must have heard some gossip. I wondered what she was thinking as she looked across the yard and saw Griffin with his arm around my shoulder. I leaned into him, as if to prove to her (or to myself) that there was no mistake in what she was seeing.

  ***

  Over the past year, Amanda had developed a condition that caused the septum in her nose to collapse. She could only breathe through her mouth, and her voice was so raspy it was hard to understand her on the telephone. Worse, perhaps, was her wounded vanity, her nose smooshed in like an old prizefighter’s. She went to several doctors before she found a surgeon at Mass. Eye and Ear who came up with a solution, a procedure that left her with a little dent in her nose but nothing off-putting. In early May she called me and said she was coming to Boston for a checkup. The two of us had been getting closer since my marriage had fallen apart, and I enjoyed having her stay with me. Some nights we’d sit in the kitchen, talking and getting buzzed on white wine; sometimes Griffin joined us. Amanda had confessed to me recently that, much as she cared for Matt, Griffin was obviously more my type—hers too—a man “with the devil in his eye,” just like Thorny. For once I admitted she was right.