Perfect Lies

by Liza Bennett

  “I’m sure you’re aware that Lark’s not talking to me,” Meg explained. “And I remember how kind you were to Lucinda when she was in the hospital. Besides, I have a sinking suspicion Lark doesn’t want Lucinda’s things in the house anyway.”

  “Meg, I’d love to help,” Francine responded, though Meg could already hear the big “but” in her voice. “Things are extremely tense around here now. After the hearing, the D.A. lit a fire under the police investigation, just when we hoped it was dying down. It’s all anyone’s talking about now. Matt’s been called back in for further questioning. Apparently his alibi didn’t hold up.”

  “Matt?” Meg had never seriously considered him as a suspect. Though, knowing what she did about his feelings for Lucinda, she wondered how she could have overlooked the possibility.

  “He claims he was on the Internet that morning,” Francine replied, her usually calm and steady voice reedy with concern. “But our phone records don’t show any modem activity at that time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said. “And I’m sorry to add to your problems, but do you think you could talk to Lark about Lucinda’s possessions?”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end, and Meg could imagine the minister trying to weigh all the pros and cons, the good and bad, of her request.

  “I can’t, Meg,” Francine finally replied. “But not because of Lark’s feelings. I’m just so worried about Matt. He refuses to tell me what’s going on—what happened that morning. I think he was with Lucinda. I know that he cares about her—probably thinks he loves her. That’s the only reason I made an effort to reach out to her. Because, you see, I’m afraid my real feelings toward Lucinda are not … they just aren’t very Christian.”

  Meg considered the news about Matt and decided not to mention it to Lucinda until she was in a better place emotionally. The following Saturday, Lucinda and Meg spent the day out clothes shopping—an exhausting and ultimately frustrating experience for Meg. She was generous with her credit card as well as her advice about what flattered Lucinda, but the teenager didn’t even pretend to listen to her. The merchandise in Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Lord & Taylor, was “totally uncool.” Finally, in Macy’s, after a quick stop at a nearby McDonald’s for lunch, Lucinda spotted a pair of boots that she liked: hideous platforms with grotesque rounded toes and wavelike slabs for heels.

  “Can I wear them now?” she asked as Meg was signing the receipt.

  “If you think you can actually walk in them without falling over,” Meg replied, but she saw in Lucinda’s expression something she’d never seen before: an unguarded, childlike delight.

  The shopping breakthrough came as they were passing the cheaper discount stores on the way to get the subway down to SoHo and some of Meg’s favorite boutiques.

  “Cool,” Lucinda said, stopping in front of a window display. Slinky lime green bell-bottoms and matching tunic made out of some ultra-shiny fabric that Meg suspected was highly flammable.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Meg moaned.

  “Like you would know what’s really hot. Can I at least try it on? Puh-leeze?”

  It wasn’t until Lucinda proudly modeled the shimmering, cheaply made outfit, complete with her new boots, that Meg realized how close the clothes were to the User Friendly line that SportsTech had assigned to Hardwick and Associates.

  “Whaddya think?” Lucinda asked with a big grin, though it was clear that she thought she looked pretty stunning. In truth, the soft fabric of the pants glossed over Lucinda’s heavy thighs. And the top, though nothing special, was cut tight across the chest where Lucinda had the greatest bragging rights. Meg’s speculative look obviously worried Lucinda, who hurriedly went on, “But it’s like ten times cheaper than that crap you wanted me to buy at Saks.”

  “It’s not the money, Luce. I was just wondering why you like these particular things, that’s all.”

  “Because,” Lucinda turned around to catch the full effect of her reflection in the three-way mirror, “it’s what everyone’s wearing.” And, when it became clear that Meg was going to buy the clothes for her, Lucinda went on to magnanimously describe who “everybody” was: the lead singer in a band whose latest CD Meg was ready to burn and the teenage star of an insipid TV show that Meg had been forced to watch with Lucinda on Wednesday nights. In other words, role models not unlike the ‘70s icons who had dictated Meg’s fashion tastes at the same age. She remembered her mother’s despairing reaction to the shag hair cut that Farrah Fawcett Majors had inspired her daughter to try.

  They went on to three other similar discount outlets and ended up with six purchases altogether. Meg knew that it was a relatively cheap way of buying Lucinda’s gratitude, but after the emotional whiplash she’d experienced living with the teenager for just a few weeks, she decided that she deserved a break. She had been working hard to maintain at least a surface equilibrium in her new life with Lucinda, but it wasn’t easy. Nothing was these days.

  The once familiar rhythms of her existence upstate—her talks with Lark, her closeness to Brook and Phoebe, the frequent weekend trips to Red River—had all abruptly stopped. But like a person who continues to sense the motion of the waves after returning to dry land, Meg could still feel the disconcerting pull and sway of what she’d been forced to leave behind. The lilt of Lark’s voice. The smell of freshly mown hay in the fields beyond the farmhouse.

  Perhaps worst of all, she sensed the end—before it had even had a chance to begin—of her relationship with Abe. He claimed to be very busy. He’d returned to New York for a few days and then had to turn around and go right back to LA again. He said a few times that he missed her. And yet, Meg was enough a veteran of the romance wars to be able to detect when the opposing side was in retreat. Abe was backing off, she knew. And it filled her with such sadness and longing that she was almost grateful for the endless distractions Lucinda provided.

  The new clothes sent Lucinda into an upswing. She was so infused with goodwill that she announced on the way back to the apartment that she would cook dinner that night, treating Meg to her one great specialty: turkey lasagna. Though it took Lucinda three hours and levied a heavy toll on Meg’s little kitchen, the lasagna was very good—sweet tomato sauce studded with ground turkey and onions, soft layers of pasta and ricotta, a crunchy crust of browned mozzarella and Parmesan. Meg made a tossed green salad. They ate in the small dining alcove that adjoined the kitchen, a CD that they could both agree on—Sarah McLachlan’s latest—playing in the background. Meg poured herself a glass of wine.

  “Let me have some,” Lucinda said. “No way.”

  “I’m, like, fully grown, you know.”

  “Legally, you’re a minor. One who happens to be out on bail.”

  “So what—you gonna tell the judge I had a sip of wine?

  “At the same time I tell her you’re smoking joints in my kitchen.” Meg had first noticed the smell of pot the night after Lucinda started back at school. In the middle of the night Meg had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water only to be confronted by an aroma that took her instantly back to her childhood—the sweet sad scent drifting up from downstairs along with the sound of adult laughter.

  That shut Lucinda up for a moment. Then she said, “I can’t sleep.”

  “So? Read a book. Do some homework. Have you spoken to Dr. Markowitz about it?” This was the psychiatrist the state had approved for Lucinda’s therapy, and Lucinda’s one chore every afternoon was to get to her sessions by four o’clock. Meg had heard directly from the psychiatrist earlier in the week that Lucinda was late half the time.

  “Yeah, she says it’s kind of normal after a trauma. Wouldn’t give me any pills to help, though. I’m supposed to use the time to think. And try to remember. But that’s like all I do. Sit around and try to remember something I’d rather totally forget. I don’t want to keep going over that same fucking ground. We’ve been doing this hypnosis in the sessions, and I feel sick when I wake up. I mean it. Like I want to t
oss my cookies all over Dr. Markowitz’s ten-thousand-dollar Persian rug.”

  “You tell her this?”

  “Oh yeah. I tell her everything. She says it’s all part of the process. My subconscious fighting my conscious or something.”

  “I’m curious how far back your blackout goes. Do you remember being with Matt that morning?”

  “What do you mean?” Meg, seeing Lucinda’s expression, knew her well enough by now to know she was trying to hide something.

  “Francine told me that Matt’s been called back in for questioning,” Meg told her. “He can’t seem to account for his whereabouts that morning. And when I spoke to him a few weeks ago in Red River he was very tight-lipped about you—and him—and what he thought about the murder. The two of you were together that morning: that’s my guess.”

  Lucinda suddenly reached across the table, poured herself a glass of wine, and downed it in a single gulp. “Okay, okay, okay,” she said, spinning the empty wineglass on the tabletop. “It’s not like a state secret, but we decided not to tell the police. I mean, it had nothing to do with the murder though it looked kind of incriminating. I see that now. But, yeah, we were together. All night.”

  “This was after Lark picked you up in Albany? You sneaked out to see Matt?”

  “Yeah, we did that a lot. We hung out in the woods—way back behind the studio, maybe half a mile up the mountain. There’s this old abandoned cabin that Matt fixed up with lumber Clint had left around the place. We had a mattress and blankets there, a little cooler. We drank beer and talked. And we did other things, you know. It was, like, the only place I felt really good. That night, though, I was so wired. So burnt up about Ethan. I’d scored some Percodan in New York and Matt had ripped off a quart of vodka from Yoder’s. We got totaled. I mean, really out of it. I spent most of the time just venting to Matt about Ethan. Really letting it all go. I remember falling asleep just when the sun was coming up—passing out is more like it, I guess. Then I kind of remember waking up with a bad headache. I took some more pills and washed them down with the rest of the vodka. I have this sort of vague vision of someone walking through the woods. The sounds of twigs snapping. The studio swinging in front of this weird cameralike view. I guess that was me—like staggering toward the studio. Then … well, blankness.”

  “And where was Matt?” Meg asked

  “Behind me, I think,” Lucinda said, frowning. “He must have been. I remember the sound of his laughter coming from somewhere back in the woods.”

  Two days later, a week before Christmas, Meg discovered the ongoing extent of Lucinda and Matt’s relationship. Her monthly phone bill arrived and it was easily double its normal total: the increase due to late-night calls placed to Francine’s number in Red River. She confronted Lucinda that evening.

  “What the hell were you two talking about for,” Meg glanced down at the minutes logged on the invoice, “sixty-five minutes on the night of December eighth? And then fifty-seven minutes the night after that? What’s going on here, Luce?”

  “Well…” Lucinda’s normally chalky complexion took on a pinkish tinge. “We’re just. Oh, Meg, he’s been so … he’s been the only one—besides you, of course—who’s stood by me. All this time. He wrote me every day when I was in the hospital. Called me when he could—when the Godmother wasn’t around to stop him.”

  “The Godmother?” Meg asked.

  “That’s what we call Francine,” Lucinda explained. “She hates me, you know. Always has. But Matt and me—we don’t give a damn. About her, or anybody. This whole thing—it’s made us really tight.”

  “Are you telling me you’re in love with Matt?”

  “We’re together!” Lucinda replied defiantly. “We’re like … just together. Do you know what? He’s refusing to tell the police anything about our all-nighter. He’s holding out on them. He’s trying to protect me, Meg. Isn’t that just the coolest?”

  “Listen, Lucinda,” Meg said. “Absolutely nothing about this situation is cool, don’t you get it? Ethan’s murder has ripped apart my life—destroyed my relationship with Lark. Kept me from my nieces—whom I love dearly. It’s cut me off from Red River—a whole part of my world has been ruined. And why? Because I’m trying to help you—and trying desperately to get at the truth of what happened that morning. How the hell can you even begin to think that lying about what happened and hampering an investigation—how the hell can you think that’s cool?”

  “That’s the last fucking time I confide in you about anything,” Lucinda said. “I stupidly thought maybe you wanted to hear about me—my feelings. I didn’t realize that this is all about you!”

  “How dare you say that! After everything I’ve done for you!”

  “Oh boy. Here we go again. You sound just like Ethan and Lark used to—everything you all have done for me. Like I’m a fucking charity case. Some sort of cause. I thought you liked me, Meg. I thought you cared about me. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid to ever believe that any adult could ever really love me. This is just the fucking story of my life.”

  She left the apartment soon after that, slamming the door on her way out. Meg was in the kitchen alcove, paying bills, and didn’t see her leave. She assumed that Lucinda was going out for a smoke, to calm down. They’d both let off a lot of steam, and Meg herself felt tired and unsteady. She didn’t start to worry until half an hour later when Lucinda still hadn’t come back. Meg pulled on her jacket and went out to find her. It was bitterly cold, the wind cutting in from the river. The sidewalk was empty. Meg hurried upstairs again and went into the study that Lucinda had converted into her bedroom. The closet was thrown open, the drawers to the desk ajar, Lucinda’s new clothes gone. On top of the desk she’d left a scribbled note:

  I’m sorry to have screwed everything up for you. It seems like I’m always doing that to people. That’s the other story of my life. Sorry. Really.

  Luce.

  33

  Lucinda did not return that night. Or the next morning. Meg called Francine: Matt was missing, too. The police put out APBs on both teenagers. Lucinda, who had officially jumped bail, was now a wanted fugitive.

  “If you’d just left well enough alone, Meg,” the minister told her later that day, after the police had stopped by the rectory. Francine sounded exhausted and deeply shaken. “If Lucinda had been kept in custody—safe from the town, and all of us safe from her. People are very worried around here. Concerned she’s going to come back and do further damage. Paula Yoder’s demanding police protection. Tom Huddleson asked me just now if I thought Matt was dangerous. They’re treating my son like a criminal—and, I’m sorry to have to say this—but I blame it all on you.”

  The next few days were an endless series of phone calls: Boardman, Huddleson, two different state detectives, Francine, checking every few hours just to see if Meg had heard anything from Lucinda. Over the course of this hellish period, Meg saw Francine’s benevolent facade dissolve and the raw, powerful love for her son become painfully exposed.

  “I just want him back,” Francine told Meg at one point. “If Matt and Lucinda call you, tell him for me that it doesn’t matter what he’s done. I’ll stand by him. None of this matters … so long as he comes home.”

  Though Meg was not a mother, she understood what Francine was going through—the guilt, the helplessness, the self-doubt. Meg had promised to take responsibility for Lucinda, and failed. She’d allowed herself to become provoked by the teenager, letting her temper get in the way of her better judgment. She’d let Lucinda down and now, like Francine, all Meg wanted was to get her safely back again. But, besides checking in with the police, there was very little that she could do. Except wait and worry.

  Meg now felt more cut off from her normal life than ever. It didn’t help that Abe hadn’t called. Was he was too wrapped up in the trial in LA? Or had he heard about this latest crisis with Lucinda and decided to wash his hands of her and her problems altogether? Forfeiting the bail money only added
to her continuing financial worries. And the new SportsTech presentation had been postponed until after the holidays. Everything in her life, it seemed, was in some kind of nightmarish limbo.

  It was hardly the moment for Meg to think about the Hardwick and Associates annual Christmas party, but Oliver kept dropping hints about where they might want to hold it this year—and that time was running out. Meg usually hosted an interesting party for the agency in some quintessential New York City locale. Last year, she had taken them all to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Show and then to the Rainbow Room for cocktails, overlooking the dazzling skyline.

  Thursday night, three days before Christmas, Oliver had knocked on the door of Meg’s office with a handful of menus.

  “I apologize for barging in like this, Mr. Scrooge. But, you know, tomorrow is your last opportunity to acknowledge that this season is one traditionally viewed as celebratory. Could we at least get a few six-foot grinders from the deli?”

  Meg had gone for the enormous sandwiches, and she’d also sprung for sodas, beer, chips, and a conference room full of hilariously gaudy Christmas decorations that Oliver had found at a discount party-wares shop. Oliver covered the walls of the agency with shiny plastic Santas, strands of Christmas tree lights, and the pièce de résistance, which they hung above the audiovisual center in the conference room: a plastic frieze of the eight reindeer and sleigh, Rudolph leading the pack with a huge nose that lit up, blinking bright red.

  Despite her depressed state, Meg couldn’t help but be drawn into the spirit of the occasion. They all worked together so closely and often under such pressure that their camaraderie was not unlike that of an infantry platoon. And that autumn a certain siege mentality had taken hold of the group. Though Meg had tried to gloss over how seriously the Jarvis bankruptcy affected their business—or how much her personal problems were claiming her time and attention—she had the feeling that they all knew. Oliver wasn’t one to keep secrets and the art department, though often catty and bickering, managed to share gossip with generous abandon. In any case, they had all come through for her: working long hours, keeping their tempers and heads when the computers crashed, and making the daily grind seem like fun. With the problems at Jarvis, the company had barely made money that year, but Meg managed to give everyone a bonus by taking a pay cut herself.