True Love (and Other Lies)

by Whitney Gaskell

  “So have you ever had to do something like that to keep a job? Something disgusting and degrading and horrible? Like sleeping with your boss, or something like that?” Jane asked hopefully.

  The idea of sleeping with Robert was even more nauseating to me than the subject of icky feet. I shuddered at the thought.

  “No, nothing like that. Although while I was in college, and doing a summer internship at Good Housekeeping, I did end up spending more hours babysitting my supervisor’s kids than working on the magazine,” I said. “Their favorite game was Throw Things at Claire, preferably hard, sharp-edged objects. Apparently, whoever was able to draw the most blood won.”

  I could tell from Jane’s defeated expression that she didn’t rate babysitting—even if it involved watching demon spawn—to be nearly as humiliating as giving pedicures under duress.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You won’t be in this position forever, and you’re making great contacts at the magazine. When I first got out of college, I spent two years as an editorial assistant at Cat Crazy. That’s probably why I’m working at Sassy Seniors and not Vogue. At least you’re starting out somewhere a little higher on the food chain.”

  This seemed to brighten Jane.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’d die if I had to work for one of those dorky magazines. I’d rather give Bavmorda pedicures. No offense,” she added quickly. “So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  I actually blanked for a minute, before remembering that the holiday was only a week away. “Oh God, I don’t know. I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “It’s next week,” Jane reminded me. She rolled her eyes. “I’m going home to Boise. Unfortunately. I couldn’t find an excuse not to go, and my parents wore me down.”

  I tried to remember if I’d talked about Thanksgiving plans with either of my parents. This is what happens when your nuclear family goes through a hellish divorce—holidays are something that everyone tries hard to avoid. And it looked like we’d succeed this year. My mom now lived in Florida with my stepfather, while my dad and stepmom lived near where I grew up, in Maryland. Since I hadn’t made travel plans to visit either set, it was doubtful I was going to be leaving town. Although actually, the idea of four whole days to myself, with nothing planned and nothing to do, sounded wonderful. I could take lots of bubble baths, read through the stack of paperback books I’d been compulsively buying and not yet had time to read, and catch up on my sleep. It would be a little mini-break from life.

  “I guess I’m going to stay in the city,” I said, warming to the idea. Maybe I’d finally get around to taking down the hideous floral wallpaper border the previous occupant of my apartment had put up around the kitchenette, apparently using superglue to attach it. I’d been tearing down scraps, but really needed to rent some kind of an industrial steam remover to get it all off.

  “Lucky you. So what else is going on? Are you seeing anyone?” Jane asked. She was only twenty-five, and thus too naive to know that this wasn’t a question you should pose to a woman in her thirties, so I decided to forgive her.

  “Sort of,” I hedged, a battle rising between the side of me that was desperate to talk to someone about my new romance with Jack and the side that knew how horrible it sounded to admit that he had just broken up with my now-heartbroken best friend. “I met a guy while I was in London two weeks ago, and we’ve been e-mailing and talking on the phone a lot.”

  “Really . . . so, tell me everything,” Jane said, sounding a lot more interested than I would have thought she’d be. I knew for a fact that she was something of a wild child, while I could just barely remember what it was like to have enough energy to go out clubbing all night after working all day. I would have thought that a staid, overseas correspondence between two thirty-somethings would bore her to pieces.

  “There’s not much to tell,” I lied. “I met him on the plane ride over, and we went out a few times while I was there, and since I’ve come back we’ve kept in touch.”

  “You are the only person I know who could make a torrid affair with a hot foreigner sound so boring,” Jane complained. “I was hoping for some juicy details.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you the juicy stuff, but he is pretty great,” I admitted. “But he’s not a foreigner—he’s American.”

  “Oh, that’s no fun. I’m sick of American guys,” Jane said, with a jaded wave of her hand. “They’re all the same. I want to go out and find a sexy Italian or Frenchman. Someone who’s dark and complicated and talks with a thick accent. Do you think Gérard Depardieu is sexy?”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “I guess I don’t really either, except for his accent, which is yum,” she said.

  I stirred my iced tea and poked at the bloated lemon bobbing around next to the melting ice cubes with my spoon. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a thing for European men. I think it’s their lax attitudes toward monogamy. And I tend to think of French men as being fussy.”

  Jane was looking at me like I had two heads. “Monogamy,” she snorted. “Who cares about monogamy? The whole concept is sexist and outdated.”

  Now I remembered why Jane and I didn’t get together that often—she was fun, but she always made me feel so old. Of course monogamy would sound boring to her. When your breasts and ass are in roughly the same places as they were when you were sixteen, you tend to focus more on momentary fun than long-lasting commitment.

  “I don’t agree. I think infidelity is toxic to a relationship,” I said, thinking of my father’s affairs and what they had done to my parents’ marriage.

  Dad had never fully grasped the concept that exchanging wedding vows was meant to put an end to his dating. I was five years old the first time my mother kicked him out of the house, and I remember huddling in bed, desperately hoping that the warm cocoon of blankets and pillows would protect me, as I overheard their screaming fight on the night he left. The next day the house felt ominously empty, and I came upon my mother sitting on the ground, their white satin wedding album on her lap, calmly cutting up every photograph with a pair of pinking shears. Mom eventually let him back in, only to bounce him out again two years later after his then-current girlfriend had called and announced to my mother that she’d accompanied my father on a business trip to San Diego. And back and forth they went, a circle of screaming fights and changed locks, and then a tearful reunion, followed by a period of indifferent antagonism, trailed by the discovery of yet another infidelity, until they finally—mercifully—decided to stop torturing one another and divorced. As I said, they were hardly marital role models.

  “Well, what about this new guy? Do you think it’s serious with your new boyfriend?” Jane asked.

  Boyfriend. I rolled the word around in my mouth, liking the sound of it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, probably not. He lives in England, after all. But I’m trying not to think about it too much,” I said, wondering when I had become so adept at lying. I had hardly thought of anything else since I’d returned from London.

  “Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you! Did you hear that Retreat is hiring a writer? A headhunter sent around an e-mail to everyone at Runway, to see if anyone was interested in applying for it,” Jane said.

  Great. Jane was only a few years out of college, and already headhunters were scouting her out. But a job opening . . . the idea was intriguing. I knew there was no chance I would get it, of course—Retreat was out of my league. It was a high-end travel magazine that targeted the same readership as Town & Country and Vogue. Its features revolved around exclusive Caribbean resorts and hotels in Sydney or Stockholm renowned for their four-star chefs and cutting-edge architecture. On the rarified pages of Retreat, the articles were nestled in between advertisements for Louis Vuitton luggage and Patek Philippe watches, and the word “budget” was only used in an ironic sense, if at all. So the odds that they were in the market for a writer who was well versed on the best of the low-end national hotel chains an
d how to dine out at a discount (eat early, skip the cocktails, ask for a doggie bag) were low. But I could always try for it. What was the worst thing that could happen—that they would reject me? Besides, this was just what I needed to get my mind off of Jack. A job search.

  “Are you going to apply for it?” I asked, hoping that she’d say no. After all, Jane was a friend, so I couldn’t go after a job that she was interested in, although the irony of this wasn’t lost on me. I had no problem poaching my best friend’s ex-boyfriend, and yet had moral qualms about going after the same job as an old work colleague. Apparently I did have some standards after all, as twisted as those might be.

  “God, no,” Jane snorted. “They don’t have an office here, and there’s no way I’m moving to the Midwest. I’m not cut out to be the wife of a corn farmer.”

  “Midwest? Jane, the Retreat offices are in Chicago. I don’t think you have to break out the overalls and pitchfork in order to work there,” I said.

  “As far as I’m concerned, if it’s not Manhattan, it’s not civilization,” Jane said, sounding final on the subject.

  Actually, I was quite pleased. If she wasn’t going to go for it, then I could pursue the job with a clear conscience. And who knows, other writers might have the same reservations about moving out of the city, so maybe the competition for the position wouldn’t be as fierce as I’d originally expected. As for me, I would happily live on a corn farm—for that matter, in the pigsty of the corn farm—if it meant being free of Robert and Sassy Seniors.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon furtively working on my résumé, hoping that Peggy or Robert wouldn’t suddenly materialize and catch me in the act. I was trying to figure out if there was any way to make my stints at Good Housekeeping, Cat Crazy, The Great Outdoors (the magazine I had worked at just before coming to Sassy Seniors—during the time I was there Maddy had teased me mercilessly about how ridiculous it was that someone who thought that a picnic in Central Park was roughing it was writing for a magazine that focused on camping and hiking), or Sassy Seniors sound remotely modish enough for Retreat, before coming to the conclusion that there was simply no way. I was tempted to just start making things up—substituting an internship at Elle for the one at Good Housekeeping, swapping out Cat Crazy for Allure. But I didn’t dare do it. The magazine industry is only so large, and there was always a chance that if I insisted I once worked at W magazine, I’d end up being interviewed by someone who had actually worked there.

  By midafternoon I remembered my conversation with Jane about Thanksgiving and decided I’d better ring the folks and find out what their plans were for next week. I knew they’d each be upset that I wasn’t going to spend the holiday with them, so I figured I needed to do some damage control. It would just be a matter of letting them down easy, of promising visits in the near future and all of that, but still. It was important to keep the lines of communication open. I called my mom first.

  “Hello,” my mother said, answering the phone on the first ring.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Who’s this?”

  Sigh. The woman only had two children . . . was it really too much to ask for her to recognize us each by voice? And how was it possible that even after all of these years, she still had the ability to make me feel less important than her weekly manicure appointment?

  “It’s your daughter. Claire,” I said.

  “Oh, hi, honey. I’ve been meaning to call you. Did you hear that Pammy and Hector Thompson are getting divorced?”

  She sounded vaguely excited at the prospect. Ever since her own divorce, my mother has greedily lapped up the news of marital discord in other couples. It was a rather disturbing habit, one that reminded me of those old people who sit at home listening to the news of car accidents and drug busts on their police scanners. It was a particularly incongruous image, though, if you knew my mother, who is one of the most unfailingly elegant women I’ve ever met. Unlike my sister, Alice, I inherited neither my mother’s grace nor her poise nor her slim figure, and instead took after my tall, broad father. I don’t think my mother has ever really forgiven me for this lapse of judgment.

  “No, but then I don’t really keep in touch with anyone back home. Other than Dad, I mean. Anyway, I called about Thanksgiving,” I said.

  “What about it, dear?”

  “Well . . . I didn’t know what your plans were . . .” I said, bracing for the onslaught of maternal disapproval when I announced I wasn’t going to Florida.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Howard and I are going on a cruise! Doesn’t that sound like fun? We’re sailing out of Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, and then going to Key West, and Cozumel, and then someplace else in Mexico—I can’t remember the name—Howard!” My mother didn’t bother to move the phone receiver away from her mouth as she yelled for my stepfather. I held the receiver away from my ear, wondering if the damage to my hearing would be permanent. “Howard! What’s the other place the cruise is stopping at? Georgetown? No, I don’t think that sounds right. I think it was a Mexican name.”

  “That’s okay, Mom. I really don’t need to know,” I said, my ears ringing.

  “Well, anyway, doesn’t that sound exciting? There’s going to be dancing every night, and they’re going to have a big Thanksgiving buffet, and the Andersons are going—you know the Andersons, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes, you do. They live down the street from us,” my mother continued.

  I rolled my eyes. No, I didn’t know the Andersons, and I can’t believe she went and made plans for Thanksgiving without even talking to me about it. She was supposed to be my mother, for God’s sake. Didn’t she care that I was going to be all alone for the holiday?

  “But what about me?” I asked. “You’re just abandoning me?”

  My mother laughed. “Sweetheart, you’re a grown woman. I just assumed that you had made plans to go see your father and that woman.”

  My mother never refers to my stepmother by name. I suppose you can’t blame her, since my Dad did begin dating Mitzi while he was still married to my mother.

  “No. I don’t know what they’re doing,” I said.

  “Well, I’d invite you to go with us, but I happen to know for a fact that the cruise has completely sold out. The Gubmans—you know the Gubmans, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  My mother continued talking as if she hadn’t heard me. Which she probably hadn’t.

  “The Gubmans tried to book the same cruise last week, and there was nothing available. They’re on a waiting list, but it doesn’t look as if they’ll get on, which is a shame, because I don’t think they have any other plans for the holiday. Although I’m sure they can always go over to the Donaldsons’,” she trilled on.

  Great. Not only was my mother blowing me off for Thanksgiving, but she was far more concerned with whether the Gubmans were going to be alone (although, since there were presumably two of them, they’d at least have each other) than she was about me. I eventually got off the phone with her, but first I had to hear about how the Donaldsons’ daughter, whom I’ve never met, had just graduated from law school, and wasn’t that just fabulous, and how my mother wished I’d gone on to get an advanced degree in something. I finally managed to wriggle away from the conversation, and dialed my father’s office number.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  “Hi, pumpkin,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “I am at work. I was just calling to find out what you and, and, um, Mitzi”—I always stumble over my stepmother’s stupid nickname, since it sounds like something someone would call their pet schnauzer—“were planning to do for Thanksgiving.”

  “Didn’t we tell you? We’re flying out to San Francisco to see your sister, and then we’re going to go on a winery tour,” he said.

  I suppose this is what I get for not having a closer relationship with my sister, Alice. I had no one to help me keep tabs on my parents.


  “Oh. No. I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “We’re flying out on Tuesday, spending a few days with Alice, and then we’re going to rent a car and drive north through the Sonoma Valley,” my dad said. “What are your plans?”

  “I don’t have any,” I said pointedly.

  “I’d invite you to come with us, but I don’t think you’d be able to get a flight at this late date,” my father said.

  Now I know how Macaulay Culkin must have felt in those “Home Alone” movies when his family deserted him over the holidays. Maybe that’s what I’d do for Thanksgiving. I’d rent Home Alone 1, 2, and 3 (was there a Home Alone 3?) and watch them while eating a frozen turkey dinner, the really awful kind that comes on an aluminum tray and has cardboardlike turkey, the super-whipped mashed potatoes, and the apple compote that for some reason comes out of the oven four times hotter than anything else and ends up scalding your entire mouth if you eat it too quickly.

  I mean, I know that I’m a grown-up, and I understand that when my parents decided to dissolve their marriage, it pretty much put an end to those cozy, picturesque family holidays. Not that my family ever had celebrations like that in the first place. In fact, most of my memories about holidays past are pretty vague. All I can remember is a lot of anxiety, strained voices, and snippy conversations about where my dad’s mother could go jump if she didn’t like the idea of having a pork roast for Christmas dinner. But was it too much to ask that at least one of my two parents could make an effort to try to include me in their plans with their new spouses? In fact, I thought that when your parents divorced, they were supposed to try to buy your affection, with promises of pet ponies and such—not dump you on major holidays.

  Hanging up with my dad was always much easier than it was with my mother. I think it makes him vaguely uncomfortable to talk to me directly, now that he doesn’t have my mother around to translate what my sister and I are saying. In fact, all I had to do was make an oblique reference to menstrual cramps, and he quickly said, “Oh, well, I’ll let you go then.” As soon as I set the receiver down, Helen appeared at the opening of my cubicle.