Two Truths and a Lie

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “I know your number by heart.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like for me, Daniel. You don’t have kids. That part of it is really complicated.”

  Daniel’s face had taken on an expression Rebecca had never seen on him before: a cross between a teacher who’d stayed up too late grading exams and a Boston-bound commuter who’d just encountered construction on the Tobin Bridge. When he spoke, it was with someone else’s voice, a sharper, harsher voice. “With all due respect, Rebecca, you don’t know what it’s like for me. I feel I’m grieving your loss and my loss, while you’re only grieving yours. I’ve got to be honest with you. It feels unbalanced.”

  The family moved on. A curly-haired dog put its front paws on the adjoining bench, looking at its owner’s ice cream cone.

  “I can’t do something before I’m ready, Daniel. I know that might not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me. This is the only way for me to handle things right now, by keeping parts of my life in different boxes.” Daniel in one box, Morgan and Alexa in another box, Gina in a third (smaller) box.

  “If it is,” he said sadly, “I don’t think I can be a part of it right now. I’m sorry, Rebecca. I think I’m falling in love with you. I really do. But I don’t want to be in a box. I don’t think I can keep being your secret.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. Their first fight! It was a quiet, civilized fight; they hadn’t even raised their voices, but something had cooled, the atmosphere had reordered itself around them, and everything felt different. A first fight was always momentous.

  Daniel rose from the bench.

  “Are we still walking tomorrow?” Rebecca asked, a little bit desperately. “In Maudslay?” Three days a week they met early, at six, before anyone was out, and walked Bernice.

  Daniel fixed her with a sorrowful, troubled gaze, and her heart plummeted. “I don’t think I can do it tomorrow,” he said. He took her hand and squeezed it once, then let it drop. “I’ll talk to you soon, Rebecca.”

  The next day, instead of going to Maudslay on her own, she waited until midmorning and walked Bernice down to Cashman Park. She’d show Daniel. How dare he! Insisting that they do things the way he wanted. Claiming to be falling in love with her. How dare he.

  She sat on one of the benches that faced the water. How dare he.

  Bernice settled herself under the bench and Rebecca poured a little bit of the water she always brought with her into Bernice’s collapsible bowl and put the bowl where Bernice could reach it. She contemplated the river and the scrubby grass that grew between the water and her bench. There was a line of inflatable Zodiacs waiting to take boat owners out to their boats. Far to the right she could see the Route 1 bridge, which sometimes shifted into drawbridge mode to allow tall-masted sailboats through.

  She leaned back and looked at the clear blue summer sky. She felt something against her back and twisted around to get a better look. It was a plate indicating that the bench had been dedicated in memory of Gilbert Lane, “The Chief.” The chief of what? she wondered. Should she dedicate a bench to Peter? That seemed like it might be a nice concrete way to solidify his memory. Maybe when she got home she’d talk to the girls and see what they thought. They could come sit on the bench when they were particularly missing him.

  Daniel. Peter. Her ex-husband. How was it possible that she’d lost all three of these relationships?

  I think I’m falling in love with you, Daniel had said. And also: I don’t think I can keep being your secret.

  The longer she sat on the bench and watched the river slide by the more she realized the crux of the problem. The problem was that what Daniel wanted and needed from her wasn’t the same thing as what she was able to give him. That was it. Did that mean doom?

  She was dancing with these thoughts, doing a little tango, maybe some samba, when she saw the familiar figure of Patricia Stone come along the trail, heading toward her. Patricia was walking with purpose, moving her arms with every step. Power walking. Patricia was head of the committee for the Holiday House Tours. Rebecca thought about getting up and quickly walking in the other direction, avoiding Patricia, basically abdicating her committee spot for all time. As far as Rebecca was concerned, Gina could have it permanently.

  “Rebecca!” Patricia said. “Long time, no see. Mind if I sit down?”

  “Of course not. Just don’t be frightened of the attack dog under the bench.” Bernice panted agreeably and then laid her head between her paws and promptly fell asleep.

  “I’m thinking about walking the entire rail trail today!” said Patricia. Down the way, the trail hooked up across Water Street and meandered through the South End neighborhoods before emerging triumphantly by March’s Hill on High Street, and if you were bold enough, you could cross Route 1 and pick up the other section by the train station, circling back to where they now reposed. “But I’m just going to gather myself first.” She sat. “We’d love to have you back on the holiday tour committee this year, you know, Rebecca. We missed you last year.”

  “I’m not ready yet, I don’t think, Patricia,” said Rebecca. They watched a boat trailer back up toward the water and deposit a Boston Whaler into the river.

  Patricia looked at Rebecca shrewdly and said, “I understand.” She seemed like she had more to say, but that maybe she wasn’t going to say it.

  “Thank you,” said Rebecca. “Well, it was nice to see you, Patricia. I hope you make it all the way around the rail trail in one piece!” She stood up and started unwinding Bernice’s leash from where she’d somehow gotten it caught around the bench.

  Patricia said, “Did you know, Rebecca, that when I was forty-nine years old my husband died?”

  “Nooo!” said Rebecca. She sat back down. “I didn’t know that!”

  “Yes. He was in a horrific car accident on 95 in Topsfield. It was a bright-white winter’s day. No snow on the ground. The other driver was at fault—he was a teenager, still on his provisional license. This was before texting, of course, but he was distracted by something in the car, I don’t know if he was fiddling with the radio or what, they never knew for certain, and anyway in the end it didn’t matter. He was going too fast to begin with, and he took his eyes off the road, and he forced my Jerry right into the guardrail, at sixty-five miles an hour. Jerry never had a chance to react.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Rebecca. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. I thought you’d been married to Bob forever. Your kids—”

  “Jerry is the father of my children. Bob and I just celebrated fifteen years,” said Patricia. She lifted her sunglasses and winked at Rebecca. “We’re practically newlyweds.” She paused and reached down to pat Bernice’s head. “Anyway. I remember like it was yesterday, being in the stage that you’re in now. You’re grieving, but you’re living, and some days you’re doing more grieving than living and some days you’re doing more living than grieving. And you never know which kind of day it’s going to be until you open your eyes in the morning.”

  “That’s exactly right,” breathed Rebecca. “Exactly right.”

  “And I remember how it was after I met Bob too. He would do something, I don’t know, something silly that would rub me the wrong way, and I’d think, ‘Jerry would never do that.’ But that wasn’t fair to Bob, you see. Maybe Jerry would have done the thing that rubbed me the wrong way! But I was holding Bob up to some impossible standard. The standard of a dead man. So. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the topic, but I have been through what you’re going through now. And it’s terrible, and it’s painful, and it’s exhausting. But if I could go back in time to my forty-nine-year-old self, I’d tell her not to discount the value of getting back into the world.” Patricia rapped on the bench three times, as if to signal that she’d dispensed all of the advice she’d come to give, and rose. “It was lovely to run into you, Rebecca. Your spot is always available, should you decide to return to the committee. Even if someone else has
ostensibly claimed it. We’ll always have room for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Rebecca.

  Rebecca watched Patricia resume her purposeful stride toward the rail trail, and she thought long and hard about what the older woman had told her.

  Of course it hadn’t all been perfect with Peter, no matter what Rebecca had told Sherri that night by the pool. Sometimes he left his socks on the floor, and when his seasonal allergies kicked in, he snored so badly she had to sleep with headphones, and sometimes he was too strict about keeping the garage tidy. And by the way she was no picnic to live with when it was almost time for winter break and all of the kids at school were sick and she couldn’t keep their germs at bay; she was always snappish in the winter. At least twice a week they quarreled about whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher. Rebecca absolutely hated dragging out the recycling in the winter when Peter traveled and she complained about that more than she should have because, come on, it was just a couple of bins. She watched Patricia walk on, and she thought about the sorrows, small and large, that people carried around with them. Patricia walked past the spot where they often sat to watch the Yankee Homecoming fireworks, and past the playground where the girls used to play when they were little. Patricia got smaller and smaller until finally she disappeared altogether from Rebecca’s line of vision.

  45.

  The Squad

  If you turn down a spot on the committee for the Holiday House Tours two years in a row, you’re not going to get asked back. You’re just not. We know people who have been trying to get on that committee for four or five years—longer, in some cases. If Rebecca wanted to give her spot to Gina, obviously that was her choice. But she could have at least answered Gina’s texts about it, so Gina would know what she was thinking.

  (By now it was almost August, and we had seen almost nothing of Rebecca.)

  One of us thought maybe she was seeing somebody, but why would she keep that a secret?

  We wouldn’t blame her if she was! Peter had been gone for a year and a half by this point!

  46.

  Alexa

  For the next several days the conversation with Cam roiled around Alexa’s stomach like a batch of bad oysters. She vacillated between self-righteousness (how dare he refuse to help her with this very scary situation!) and self-doubt (was there a chance he was right?). At the Cottage, she worked one five-hour shift, during which she made six Ringers, three milk shakes, and who-knows-how-many ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles. She was scattered and klutzy. She dropped a doughnut, and then she stepped on it. She gave the wrong change to two different customers. She forgot to tell her boss that they were on their last container of chocolate ice cream, so they ran out—a huge problem, obviously.

  “Whoa,” said her coworker, Hannah. “Amazon. What’s going on with you? You get in a fight with Tyler or something?”

  “No,” said Alexa tightly. “No, I did not get in a fight with Tyler. Tyler isn’t even here. He’s still in Michigan.”

  She sat on the beach for forty minutes after her shift, long enough to add a light golden topcoat to her tan without going too far.

  Alexa simmered and simmered. She made and posted one video, about market orders and stop-loss orders, which she had planned on doing separately but then realized she could easily combine into two. She reorganized her closet and her bathroom drawers. In a fit of do-goodness, she took Bernice down to the boardwalk, to see the tall ship (Bernice loved boats).

  Finally, when she could stand the terrible feeling no longer, Alexa got in her Jeep and made the short trip to Market Basket.

  Alexa generally tried to stay away from Market Basket because you couldn’t get down an aisle without seeing someone you knew. Sure enough, near the yogurt she ran into her eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Sanchez, who never failed to remember and mention Alexa’s “cogent” essay on To Kill a Mockingbird. (Topic: Discuss the concept of fear in the novel.)

  “It’s so nice to see you, Alexa!” Mrs. Sanchez gushed. And then, right on cue, “You know, I still use your Mockingbird essay as an example. Every year, I pull that thing out, and I read the whole thing out loud, and I try to explain to my students that it’s a close reading of the text that really makes for a stellar piece of work.” She beamed for an uncomfortably long time and then said, “Please don’t tell me you graduated. Is time going by that fast?”

  “I did,” said Alexa. “It is.”

  “Where are you headed next year?”

  “Um,” said Alexa. “I’m not sure.” She was scanning the aisles for Cam. She was pretty sure he worked checkout, but then again she could imagine him cheerfully restocking the salsa and answering customers’ questions about where to find the Bob’s Red Mill flour. “Probably Colby.”

  “How wonderful! And I hope you’re going to put those fabulous writing skills to use,” said Mrs. Sanchez. Alexa was pretty sure that when she moved to Los Angeles and got natural highlights in her hair from the sun and dated surfers and actors, she would not be using the skills that allowed her to delve into Jean Louise Finch’s young psyche, but she didn’t want to crush Mrs. Sanchez completely. Mrs. Sanchez, after all, seemed to be in the very tiny camp of Alexa fans.

  “I might go more in a—financy direction,” said Alexa. “I’ve become pretty interested in the stock market.” Before she could register Mrs. Sanchez’s disappointment, both in her future and in her use of the made-up word “financy,” Alexa said her good-byes.

  By the hard cheeses, she saw her neighbors from two doors down, the Walkers. She kept her head pointed toward the floor and avoided eye contact. In the nonorganic fruit aisle she saw the mother of the first family she ever babysat for, Mrs. Reyes, but she was sans children and thus easily circumvented. In the organic fruit aisle she came upon Caitlin, of all people, who was taking a selfie with a container of raspberries. Alexa didn’t know why and wasn’t about to ask. She skirted out of the fruit aisle, undetected.

  She gathered enough random food in her cart (broccoli, seltzer, those crostini Tuscan crackers Morgan liked, as an olive branch of sorts—a cracker branch) so that her trip looked legit but not over the top, and she headed toward the checkouts. Cam wasn’t working any of the registers. She chose a line with a young checkout person who might be friendly with him. Everyone else working was at least forty-five.

  “You could have gone in the express line,” the girl chirped, surveying Alexa’s items. “You wouldn’t have had to wait!”

  Alexa shot her a withering glance that said, I know, but I didn’t want to. Then she tossed her hair and said, “Hey, do you know if Cam’s working today?”

  “Did you bring your reusable bags or do you want paper?”

  Was this an answer? “Paper,” growled Alexa, and she repeated her question about Cam.

  “I don’t know,” said the girl. She called, way too loudly, over to the manager’s station. “Bill! When is Cam working next?”

  “He’s off for a few days,” said Bill. He moved over to the end of the checkout lane and began bagging Alexa’s groceries. “No reusables?”

  “She didn’t bring any,” said the checkout girl. She shrugged at Bill as if to indicate that she couldn’t help it if people didn’t care about the planet.

  Bill said, “I think he’s at the lake.”

  “Thanks,” said Alexa. She took her paper bag and hightailed it back to her Jeep before she could run into anyone else she knew.

  The first thing she did after putting away the groceries, and—out of some inexplicable spite toward the checkout girl—throwing the paper bag in the garbage can instead of recycling it, was to climb the stairs to her bedroom and call Hannah to see if she would switch shifts with Alexa. Alexa would work for her the following day if Hannah would work for her this afternoon at four.

  “I don’t know, Amazon,” said Hannah. “I’m at the beach.”

  Alexa gritted her teeth at the nickname and set her wheels turning. “Which beach?”

  “Jenness.”r />
  “Oh boy,” said Alexa.

  “What?”

  “Aren’t they getting those crazy thunderstorms up there today?”

  Hannah hesitated. “I don’t think so? It looks like really clear now?”

  “Hang on,” said Alexa. “Let me put you on speaker phone so I can check.” She paused as if she were checking her weather app and said, “Yeah, right around three. Trust me, that beach is going to clear out.”

  There was a faint murmuring, which Alexa took to indicate that Hannah was passing this information on to her fellow beachgoers.

  “Crazy,” said Hannah. “I didn’t see anything about that on my app.”

  “Are you using the app that came with your phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t do that, Hannah. That app is terrible. You’ve got to download Dark Sky. It’s so much better.”

  “Really? Dark Sky?”

  “Trust me. It keeps up much faster. These summer storms can come from out of nowhere, you know.”

  “I do have something I was hoping to do tomorrow,” Hannah considered. “So if you took my shift—”

  “Perfect!” said Alexa. “I owe you.”

  Hannah was fair-skinned and freckled so probably should limit her sun exposure. If you looked at it correctly, Alexa was doing her a favor.

  Back downstairs, she could tell that somebody had come home because the paper bag from Market Basket had been dug out of the garbage and lovingly folded into the recycling bin. She sensed the hand of Morgan the Environmentalist in this, but she didn’t stop to look around because she wanted to get on the road.