Two Truths and a Lie

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “It’s hot,” conceded Rebecca. “And that seltzer is strong.” She reached back into the Yeti and produced two wraps. She took one herself and handed Sherri the other. “Eat,” she commanded.

  Sherri did as she was told. Hummus and vegetable. She was ravenous. “Did you make this? This is delicious. This might be the best wrap I’ve ever eaten.” Since she and Katie had become a family of two their meals had been scattershot, made quickly out of boxes and cans. She hadn’t felt settled enough to cook properly, the way she had back in their old house, and often she skipped meals altogether.

  “No, I got them at the Natural Grocer,” said Rebecca. “I didn’t know if you or Katie were, you know, vegetarian or vegan or anything so I kept it simple just in case.”

  Sherri briefly relived the shame of the surf and turf at Plum Island Grille. “No,” she said. “We’re none of those things. We eat everything. Thank you. This is so—” She felt her voice catch, and she told herself to pull it together. “This is so nice of you.” She tucked her T-shirt closer around her bathing suit. Rebecca had disrobed immediately upon arrival at the beach, showing a body that was nicely toned. She’d bet Rebecca could get through the “glutes” at barre class without feeling like somebody was cutting up her muscles with a Swiss Army knife.

  Rebecca’s eyes were on Morgan and Katie. “Did you ever want to have more than one child? Sometimes I feel like Morgan is an only child, she and my older daughter are at such different stages.”

  “I definitely wanted more than one,” said Sherri. She had wanted four children, but Bobby said only one. Too much noise made him twitchy; chaos threw him off. He liked everything just so in the house, and even Katie’s possessions, her shoes tossed here and there, sometimes put him over the edge. For a criminal, he was very fastidious. Or maybe all criminals were fastidious. Sherri had never surveyed the other wives about that in particular. Though some of them volunteered marital secrets without being asked for them, so Sherri knew more than she wanted to know about, for example, Tony Cancio and the toe fetish. She wished she could un-know that one.

  Maybe it was the alcoholic seltzer talking, or maybe it was the beauty of the summer day, lulling her into an unwarranted state of complacency. Sherri felt, almost, like Rebecca was someone she could confide in. That was a dangerous feeling, and it had to be stopped at all costs. There was no person anywhere Sherri could confide in. She cast about for a change in subject, and her eyes caught on Rebecca’s wedding ring. “What did you say your husband does?” asked Sherri.

  “He’s gone,” said Rebecca. She twisted her wedding ring.

  “Like, for good?” Sherri asked. Absconded? A deserter?

  “He died,” said Rebecca. “Eighteen months ago.”

  13.

  Rebecca

  Rebecca had it down to a brief explanation, like a school report with a time limit. “He had a ruptured brain aneurysm at Logan airport, after a flight from Dubai. He managed a contracting company and he was in charge of a long-term project there. He was completely healthy. It came from out of nowhere; it was a huge shock.”

  “Oh my gosh,” said Sherri. “Really? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” The dichotomy between the bright, hot day and this news of a death would probably make Sherri clam up. Rebecca was always doing that, she felt—injecting her tragedy into someone else’s sunshine.

  She lifted her eyes to meet Sherri’s and said, “How would you have known? We just met. It’s a perfectly normal question.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sherri repeated. “I can’t even imagine. I thought my situation was hard.”

  “Your divorce,” said Rebecca.

  “Yes,” said Sherri. “My divorce. And the move. But all of that pales in comparison to this—I can’t even imagine.” She paused. “It must help, to have so many friends around, for you, and Morgan too. People seem really nice. The other day, Katie was invited to Brooke’s house to swim with Taylor.”

  “Oh, Brooke,” said Rebecca, rolling her eyes.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” said Rebecca. “Brooke’s great. Everybody’s great. When it first happened people were so supportive. So supportive. Casseroles, carpools, the whole bit.” She rummaged in the cooler and cracked a second seltzer, offering one first to Sherri, who shook her head. “I just feel like we’ve come to the end of our time limit. Like we had six months, maybe a year, to get through it and then everyone expected that we’d all be back to normal. But we’re not normal. I don’t think we’ll ever be ‘normal’ again.” She made little air quotes around the word normal. “Mourning isn’t a quick process.”

  “No,” said Sherri decisively. “It isn’t.” She said that like someone who knew, and that felt to Rebecca like an unexpected kindness, like a cool hand laid against a hot cheek.

  The first twelve months after Peter’s death had been a nest of confusion and anxiety, both of these coupled with a bone-deep, mind-numbing fatigue that nothing seemed to help. Rebecca could get nine hours of sleep, or four, or none at all, and in all cases she dragged herself through her days, especially at school, going through the motions of “getting back to normal” while wondering where she could find a quiet corner in which to lie down, and close her eyes, and forget, and remember.

  Her friends were wonderful for the first three months, caring enough for the next three, and after that point she began to sense their fatigue with her fatigue. Oh, they tried to hide it! But she was starting to drain their emotional reserves. They were ready to have the old Rebecca back: they were ready for her to move on.

  Rebecca had decided that she would never move on. She wouldn’t Tinder or Match or Zoosk or Bumble. She wouldn’t swipe left or right. She wouldn’t accept the invitations of her friends when they asked if she wanted to come to a barbecue where there might be a recently divorced man from North Andover who was “definitely looking.” (Looking for what, specifically? Rebecca wanted to ask, but didn’t.) Rebecca had had two chances at love, first with Alexa’s father and then with Peter, and look what had happened. She’d used up all of her turns. Happily ever after was not in the cards for her.

  As the one-year anniversary approached, Rebecca’s therapist suggested she try a grief support group in Haverhill. She gave Rebecca a printed list of options. Rebecca liked the therapist, and she retained some of her old schoolgirl eagerness to please. She took the list, and she promised she’d go.

  She walked into the first meeting and saw a half dozen people sitting in a semicircle. She saw a man at the snack table who looked vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t place him. He was looking at her in the same I-think-I-know-you way. She nodded, and he nodded, and together they perused the tray of store-bought cookies. Rebecca wasn’t surprised to find cookies: she had learned that when people didn’t know what to do with your grief they settled on feeding you.

  “They should serve alcohol at these things,” the man said. “It’s not AA, right? Bring out the Dark and Stormys!” Rebecca laughed and then immediately thought she might cry; Peter had loved Dark and Stormys.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “Did I say something to upset you?”

  She shook her head, mute, and he said, “I did. I can see that I did. I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” she said, because she couldn’t figure out how to say, “No need to be sorry,” without bursting into tears.

  “How can I make it up to you? How about I buy you a drink after the meeting?”

  She looked around and realized she didn’t want to be at the meeting—there was so much grief and sadness in the room, and she didn’t have space for the grief of so many other people in her withered heart, which could barely contain her own. She hesitated, and he said, “Are you from Newburyport? You look so familiar.”

  She nodded, still not trusting herself to speak, and he continued, “I teach economics at the high school. I’m Daniel.” He held out his hand. Daniel Economics, thought Rebecca. Easy enough to remember. “I’m Rebecca Coleman,” she said, meeting his own hand
with hers. Then some part of her that she thought had died with Peter—the part that danced to Nirvana in high school, the part that used to like sunbathing and sex and staying out until sunrise—said, “How about we skip this whole thing, and you buy me a drink right now?”

  They went to a new wine bar in downtown Haverhill, and saying, “Red?” and waiting for her nod, Daniel Economics ordered two glasses of Cabernet. She was grateful for this: there had been so many questions in the past year—coffin or urn? Where’s the life insurance paperwork? Do we have the kind of faucets that need to be turned off in the winter?—that she’d have been happy if somebody else answered everything for the rest of her life.

  “So . . . ,” said Daniel when they were seated. “Let’s get the inevitable out of the way.”

  Rebecca took a sip of the wine and was immediately infused with a great warmth and a sense of peace. Wine!

  “Husband,” she said. “You may have heard of him, it was news in town at the time. Ruptured aneurysm. Age forty-eight. I have two daughters, seventeen and eleven.”

  Daniel Economic’s brow furrowed immediately. He was sort of adorable when he did that; he looked like an overgrown Sharpei.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she allowed.

  “I know, that’s what everyone says. But really, I am so, so, sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she repeated. It was what everyone said, but somehow he said it differently—there was something in the directness of his gaze, and in its softness, that made her feel like he really meant it.

  He was looking at her very earnestly. “How are your daughters? How are you?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I don’t know. Bad. Fine. Terrible, mediocre, fabulous. It depends on the day. It’s hard to read Alexa—she’s older, and she’s in a different situation. But Morgan, she’s only in fifth grade. She’s taking it hard.”

  “Ohhh,” said Daniel. “Oh. Yes, I remember now. I know about your husband. Peter, you said?” She nodded. “I remember now. You should know . . . you probably know that I had your daughter, for Intro to the Stock Market. I didn’t make the connection. Does she have a different last name?”

  “She does,” said Rebecca. “Thornhill. She kept my ex’s name.” She squinted at him. She’d had only three sips, but the wine was starting to hit her. Her legs felt pleasantly numb, her lips loose. “Now you go,” she said. “Your turn.”

  “Sister,” he said. “Breast cancer, five months ago. She left behind a daughter, who’s almost thirteen.”

  “Oh my God!” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m really so, so sorry. That shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”

  “I know. It shouldn’t. But it did.”

  “Older sister or younger sister?”

  He took a deep breath; it was a breath that seemed to contain all of the sorrow in the world. He let it out slowly, deliberately. “The same age,” he said. “I’m older, technically, but only by seven minutes.”

  “No! Oh, no. No. You were twins?”

  Daniel Economics nodded. “We were really close. I was married, and divorced. I never had kids. Her family became my family. My niece feels like my own kid. They live in Boxford, so I see them a lot.” He shrugged. “It’s like a part of me died when she died.”

  “Of course it is,” said Rebecca. “You were together from the very beginning.”

  “That’s it. That’s exactly it. We were together from the very beginning. I just can’t seem to . . . get over it doesn’t seem like the right term, because I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. But I can’t seem to get back to regular life. I mean, I’m doing everything I need to do, sort of, but I’m just—”

  He trailed off, and Rebecca said, “Going through the motions?”

  “Exactly!” He smiled, and an unexpected dimple popped out in his left cheek. “Exactly.”

  “I get it.”

  “I know you do.”

  Daniel’s hand was resting on the table, next to his wineglass, and the next thing Rebecca knew she was putting her own hand over his.

  “Did you go to the parent-teacher conferences?” Daniel Economics asked. His eyes were very brown, such a deep, chocolate brown that she could scarcely see where the pupil ended and the iris began.

  “Peter went,” she said softly. “He was so good like that. He traveled a lot for work, and so when he was home he liked to be really involved with the kids.”

  “That makes sense,” said Daniel Economics. “Because I think I would have remembered you, if you had gone.” He paused. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does it get better? I’m still—I’m still in so much pain. Nearly all the time.”

  Not yet, is what Rebecca was thinking. But she said, “A little bit. No, let me revise that. It gets a lot better, but only a little bit at a time. So you hardly notice it. And then one day you turn around, and it’s not as bad as it once was.”

  “That’s really good to hear.” He reached across the table and touched her hair. He looked as surprised by this as she felt. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what made me do that. Other than the fact that you have beautiful hair.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She got quite a lot of compliments on her hair, which was a dark chestnut color with a natural but manageable wave. It was one of the only features that marked her and Alexa as related. But people didn’t usually go around touching it. For some reason this seemed as un-strange as her putting her hand over his hand.

  “Maybe we can be in pain together, sometime,” he said. “Maybe we can just talk, sometimes. Maybe we can be our own therapy group. With better cookies. Or real food, maybe. Maybe a meal!”

  “I’d like that,” she said. She drained her glass.

  He called the next day, and the day after that, and the first time Morgan had a sleepover and Alexa had plans, Rebecca went to Daniel’s house and he cooked her dinner—she deemed the restaurant scene in Newburyport too risky to bear witness to whatever it was they were doing. Which was what? Well, she wasn’t entirely sure. But after dessert it crystallized. No pun intended (dessert was ginger sorbet with pieces of crystallized ginger scattered throughout). Daniel could cook! Rebecca had cleared the plates and was about to put them in the sink when Daniel came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned, and her mouth found his without even looking for it. Then they were kissing, and then they were kissing some more, and then he was leading her into his bedroom, and clothes were coming off, and off.

  So that, it turned out, was what they were doing.

  After, while Daniel took a quick shower, Rebecca was perusing the shelves in his living room where there stood a few framed photos. There was one of Daniel and what she figured were his parents and the dead twin, standing in front of a boat with crystal-green water behind them. There was one of a young girl who she figured to be the left-behind daughter at an earlier stage of life. And there was one of . . . Gina? MOM Squad Gina? No, it couldn’t be Gina. But it was, in a photo with a bunch of other people. Here was Gina’s husband, Steve, wearing a Red Sox cap. Here was Gina and Steve’s daughter, Callie, much smaller and younger, but recognizable by her naturally curly hair and her crooked smile. And here, holding a baby who must be the now-seven-year-old brother of Callie, was Gina!

  “What is Gina doing on your bookshelves?” she called to Daniel. He came out with a towel around his waist and damp hair. Rebecca looked modestly away. He had a very nice chest—he confessed to doing one hundred push-ups every day, in sets of twenty-five—but still she felt shy; seeing a man in a towel in front of her, a man who was not Peter, made it seem all the more real, what had just occurred. A blush crept onto her cheeks.

  Daniel stood next to her and looked at the photos too. Rebecca pointed at Gina.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Gina. I don’t know why I keep this photo up here anymore! It’s from another life. So, Gina’s husband—”

  “Steve,” said Rebecca.

  “Yes
. Steve. Steve is the brother of my ex-wife, Veronica. If you can believe it. So I guess technically Gina is my ex-sister-in-law? She and Veronica were good friends, and they still are.” He made a face. “I guess that makes her kids my ex-niece and ex-nephew? But you don’t lose a niece and a nephew in a divorce, do you? I hope not. I love those kids. I guess that’s why I keep the picture up there, even though Veronica the Cheater is right there.” He jabbed a finger at a lithe blond woman who was also in the photo. “I still see them. They live over on Jefferson.”

  “Oh, I know where they live,” said Rebecca. “Believe me.” Jefferson was only a few streets away from her own house. Her heart sank. Here she thought she had found someone new, unsullied by history or connection, but she should have known better: there was no such thing in a town of this size. If Gina found out about this, she’d shout it from the rooftops, just as she had about the sleeping bag. Every time Rebecca thought about Gina she thought simultaneously about the sleeping bag and felt a rage so potent it threatened to seep out of her pores.

  “We can’t tell anyone about—this,” said Rebecca. She made a motion that indicated his towel and her own fully clothed self. “Especially not Gina.” She winced.

  “Why not?”

  “It’ll get out, someone will tell the girls. I’m not ready for a bunch of questions. I’m just—” She let out a little puff of air. “I’m still just trying to figure things out. You know?”

  He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes. He smelled like Irish Spring and also like the ginger from the dessert. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and said, “We don’t tell anyone until you are one hundred percent ready. And that’s assuming that there’s something to tell—that you want to do this” (he imitated her hand gesture) “again.”

  There were so many emotions swirling inside Rebecca that she couldn’t have given a name to each of them even if she’d wanted to. But a few were recognizable: relief, fear, sorrow, joy. Hope.