Just One Lie

by Kyra Davis

  “You did it because you became a parent,” I say, trying to reassure him. But when he doesn’t answer I sigh and rest back against the cushions. “So was that it then? No legal fight or anything?”

  “No,” he says with a shake of his head. “Nalla, she backed me up. She’s the one who acted unselfishly. She gave me our daughter even though it wasn’t what she planned, but she trusted me. She believed in me. And when the birth mother backs you up, that’s it. It’s all I needed to get my way and get it immediately. June was mine.” He takes in a deep breath. “I was a father and I was a monster and the life I had thought I was going to have was simply gone.”

  I rub my hand back and forth against my jeans where my healing cut is beginning to itch. He gave up Harvard, he gave up his dreams, and when he told that couple that they couldn’t have what they had come to think of as their child . . . he must have felt like he had given up his honor and decency, too.

  You could say that the losses cut even deeper than that, since he had expected so much more out of life than I ever did. But he had also gained more, and as perverse as it is, I’m still incredibly jealous of him. He has a family! A mother, a daughter, a life! I’d give up everything I have to be in his shoes!

  But maybe that’s because I don’t have anything to give up.

  For a very long time we both just sit in silence pondering our different heartbreaks and losses both past and future. I can hear the distant sound of traffic and the fountain in the courtyard. But in this room it’s just our breathing.

  Brad shifts his position so now I can see his face again. He’s not crying, but his eyes have a red hue. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him look lost before. I want to help him, distract him, take his mind off the past and the hurting.

  I lean forward, take his hand, and say softly, “So . . . are you ready to go to the LACMA?”

  He blinks in surprise, maybe even shock, and then . . . then he starts chuckling, and then laughing. “Only you,” he chokes out.

  “What?” I ask teasingly. “You wanted to go. You remember how to get there, right? You have the latitude and longitude?”

  It’s enough to make him laugh even harder. He lifts both my hands and kisses them.

  It’s like having my hand kissed by a prince.

  CHAPTER 26

  WE’RE AT THE LACMA in less than an hour, without the benefit of the precise coordinates. We park by the Page Museum next door and walk into the adjoining park at the La Brea Tar Pits. On the southern side there is a large pool of tar with a sculpture of a stressed-out mammoth floating about in it. I have passed it in my car at least a hundred times and always found it a little disturbing. I knew they have found fossils in that tar, and I assumed they were from mammoths—hence the statue—but still, it was unsettling to think that this poor fiberglass creature will be sinking forever as a demonstration of the demise of his predecessors.

  But now that I’m here, actually walking in the park, I immediately decide that this place is a lot more cheerful than I gave it credit for. It’s a weekday afternoon, so there are only a few picnickers lounging on blankets in the grass under sculptures of giant sloths and other totally bizarre things. Brad grabs my shoulder and points to the grass. “See that?”

  I stare down at the spot in question. There’s black stuff bubbling out of the ground fifteen feet away from a woman who’s idly reading her book. “That’s tar?” I blink and then look up at Brad.

  “It’s right under the surface,” he explains. “All over this entire area. Millions of years ago, this was an ocean. The plankton that died here eventually turned to tar, and now it just keeps coming up whenever it finds a porous sedimentary rock to move through. It’s been doing that for at least fifty thousand years, and it goes on for several blocks. They’ve found it in sewers, streets, even under buildings. You just never know when or where it’ll come up, and when it does, you never know what they’ll find in it. So far they’ve excavated millions of fossils.”

  “Millions?” That number can’t be right.

  “Millions, from over two hundred different species. They pull them out from there.” He places his hand on my other shoulder and turns me to the right, pointing to a big corded-off area that is nonetheless completely visible to the public. “And then they clean them up and display them over there.” He turns me to the left, where the extremely modest-looking Page Museum is. “It’s the only consistently active excavation site in the world; they just keep finding things.”

  I kneel down and stare at the bubbling black goo. People hate this stuff. It smells, it’s impossible to get off, and I suppose some people think it’s ugly.

  “It’s magical,” I say aloud.

  “The tar?” Brad asks, surprised, but I can sense he’s also pleased.

  “It’s the purest black I’ve ever seen. It’s glowing. And . . . and it can’t be suppressed.” I glance up over my shoulder at Brad. “Look at everything we’ve built here. The concrete streets, the commercial buildings, the grass that would never grow here naturally. We’ve tried to make this city exactly the way we think it should be, right down to the imported palm trees, but the tar”—I look back at the onyxlike substance—“that’s real. The things that we find in it are real.” I pause for a moment as I consider that. “Someone should write a song about it.”

  “You should,” he says quietly, and then offers me his hand, helps me up. “Come on, I have more to show you.”

  We start at the Page Museum. It’s completely run down. They show an illustrated movie about the origins of the place that has the production value of a 1960s educational reel. Amid the fossils there’s an animatronic mammoth that is so shaky and creaky you expect it to crumble at your feet every time it moves its trembling trunk. In a room with glass walls, people in white lab coats clean each tiny fossil. They don’t even bother looking up at the guests peering in on them; they’re too busy doing their thing, cleaning the molars of a sabertooth.

  And I love it all. I love that something so frayed and used up can still teach people about amazing things and make children happy. I love that this place doesn’t seem to care about silly things like ugly flooring or its outdated aesthetics. It only cares about the things that make it unique. It’s basically the best place ever.

  Brad and I go to one of the few interactive exhibits, a place where you can pull a big metal rod thing out of the tar. It’s supposed to show you how difficult it would be for an animal to pull out its leg should it stumble in there, and it is hard. I have to seriously struggle with it to get it out of the pit. Brad has it out in two seconds. So now I know, if he ever steps knee-deep into a pool of tar he’ll be fine.

  The whole thing makes me feel like a kid. And as if to enhance that feeling, Brad buys me a little stuffed baby mammoth from the gift store. This is the first stuffed animal I’ve ever owned that I like. When I was a kid my parents would occasionally give me high-quality stuffed animals. I remember having a big white tiger stuffed animal in my room. People would always tell me how impressive it was. But it was hard to the point of being stiff, and it was, like, practically the size of my bed. Its expression seemed mean and it was imposing and . . . well, scary. That tiger scared the crap out of me. But when I complained my father took my fear as an insult and accused me of being ungrateful. He and my mother had spent a lot of time looking for something special for me; it had been the most expensive stuffed animal in the store; other children would give their right arm for something like this; yada yada yada, stop being an unthankful bitch, Melody.

  The upshot is that I was forced to spend years of my childhood with this horribly realistic-looking predator in my bedroom that was impossible to cuddle with.

  Well, this little mammoth guy is Mr. Cuddly! In fact, that’s what I’ll call him, Mr. Cuddly Bubbles. Cuddly for obvious reasons, and Bubbles in honor of the eerily slow and disturbingly beautiful bubbles that come up from the tar pools where they extract the bones. Cuddly Bubbles.

  The art museum is next,
and while it’s no more than ten steps from a tar pit being excavated, the place has a totally different vibe. There is nothing run down about the LACMA, which I guess makes sense, since it has a different purpose, striving to show beauty rather than scientific knowledge. Brad begins by taking me to the Japanese art collection, telling me that it’s his favorite part of the museum. It is beautiful, but I don’t know if I can completely relate to it. When I tell Brad, he seems a little disappointed, but mostly confused, as if the very idea that someone could see these works as anything short of transformative is inconceivable. “What’s hard to relate to?” he asks, gesturing to a color woodblock print. “Look at the detail, the intricacy. This is from the eighteenth century, and when you compare it to the art that was being done in Europe at this time . . .” He shakes his head, trying to find the right words. “It’s more detailed, more intricate, and the craftsmanship . . . the kind of control you would have to have in order to create something like this is astounding. It’s perfect.”

  “Yeah,” I say, hugging Cuddly Bubbles to my chest. “That’s why I can’t relate.”

  He absorbs this. “I just think it’s nice, inspiring even, to see what human beings are capable of when they’re given the opportunity to really master their craft. That our flawed species can create something this impeccable, it’s a beautiful thing.”

  “Okay, I can see that,” I admit. But what I don’t add is that everything he has just said has taken these works from being unrelatable to being straight-up intimidating.

  But it’s not all like that. The sculptures of the indigenous people of Mexico really speak to me. These works cut right through all the facades and just get to the gritty heart of what makes us human. I fall in love with a sculpture of the Virgin Mary that looks heartbroken, resigned, strong, and so uniquely beautiful. She conveys a sensibility that has nothing to do with the sanitized Christianity I was fed as a child. Or this: how brilliant is this ancient sculpture of the childlike man, crouched on the pedestal like he could jump out at you at any moment? He has his tongue sticking out in a mischievous manner, and everything about him broadcasts an almost dangerous love of life.

  And then there’s the art piece in the courtyard titled Penetrable. I stand on the pavement with Brad, the wind playing with my hair, staring at a bunch of yellow plastic tubes hanging from a structured steel grid that’s about fifteen feet above my head. The tubes are just long enough to touch the ground. “I don’t get it,” I say as I turn my head to the side to see if it might be prettier at a different angle. “How is this art?’

  “It was created by Jesús Rafael Soto, one of the key figures of the kinetic art and op art movement from the 1950s and 1960s.”

  “It’s plastic tubes, Brad.”

  “It’s supposed to be a manifestation of the dematerializing effect of light.”

  “Why, because it’s yellow? And it’s not dematerializing, it’s right there.”

  “Go inside.”

  “Seriously?” I glance at a security guard standing near the door of one of the cafés. I’ve never been one to shy away from doing something just because I might get in trouble for it, but . . . not today. I don’t want anyone yelling at me today. “Museums are sort of look-but-don’t-touch kinds of places. Maybe we should just—”

  But he stops me by grabbing my hand and pulling me in. Immediately the tubes close in around me, but their rubbery composition weighs so little that each tube brushes rather than bumps against my skin. It’s like walking through tall grass. With just the lightest touch of my free hand they part for me, only to come floating back. I look up and all I see are these streaks of yellow shooting up into the sky. It’s like . . . like we’ve become part of the art, if that’s even possible. When I look ahead, behind, up, or to the left, all I see are the simple streamlined details of this artist’s creation.

  And when I look to my right I see Brad, right here, holding my hand inside the light. His eyes are dancing with a sort of childish glee, and I guess that if he held up a mirror I’d see the same thing reflected back at me. Those streaks of yellow are between us, but they don’t separate us. And when he laughingly uses his right hand to push them aside, I know what he’s doing, and I don’t resist. I let him kiss me, right here inside this light. And I don’t feel bad about it. Not now as his lips brush against mine. This isn’t a kiss of passion. This is a kiss that says, yes, we’re here, and we’re going to be okay.

  Wouldn’t that be fantastic, to be okay? Wouldn’t it be incredible if this were real? If this could last? I know it can’t, but God, do I love pretending.

  We pull away at the same time, both of us grinning sheepishly, like kindergarteners who have held hands for the first time.

  “Do you want to see the rest of the museum?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I answer quickly, playfully batting at the tubes. “Yeah, I do.”

  And so we spend the whole day there. We look at the art from all different cultures and periods. Works that were inspired by war and works that were inspired by hope and love and humor and tears. Everything.

  And when it starts to get dark he takes me to the lampposts.

  How many times have I driven past this cluster of lampposts on the sidewalk, over two hundred of them pushed together in tight little rows, right in front of the LACMA? I always saw it as a piece of utilitarian art. It’s even called Urban Light. But when you get inside of it, when the night is falling and the lights are casting their white glow and you’re weaving in and out of those gray textured columns, it changes. It’s classical and modern and incredibly romantic. Brad takes my hand and we zigzag through the maze. I don’t remember ever having this much fun without indulging in some kind of vice. I always thought museums were built for people more worldly and intellectual than me. But I’m okay here. I almost feel at home. But then, maybe that’s because I’m with Brad.

  It doesn’t seem possible that last night could have been so ugly. The night I ran out of the restaurant toward oncoming traffic, that had to have been years ago, right? No, no of course not. But it’s nice to forget for a little while.

  And then my phone rings and without even looking at it I know.

  It’s reality calling. Ugly and heavily burdensome reality.

  Reluctantly I peer into my purse and see Traci’s number on my screen, but decide to ignore it. I just want a little more time. Another hour, or another minute, just a little more time before I have to face the necessary repercussions.

  But when I don’t pick up it’s Brad’s cell that rings, and just like that, it’s . . . it’s over. The magic is taken away, like Cinderella’s carriage at midnight. It’s just gone.

  I lean against one of those beautiful posts as he lifts the phone to his ear. Closing my eyes, I focus on the happiness I had today. I want to remember it. I want to be able to draw upon it when things get hard.

  And they’re about to get hard.

  “Hey, Traci,” Brad says into the receiver. “Yeah . . . yeah, I’m with her now.” As I open my eyes, I see him smiling at me. “I think so, I’ll ask her, and if we need to reschedule, she’ll give you a call . . . Yeah . . . No, she’s fine, I’m sure she’ll talk to you about it later . . . Yeah . . . Of course . . . Talk to you soon.”

  He flips his phone closed and stuffs it into his pocket. “She’s worried about you,” he says with a smile. “And she also wants to make sure we’re still on for Saturday’s rehearsal. If you want to reschedule it won’t be a problem.”

  I take a deep breath, lower my eyes to the concrete. “Yeah, I don’t think we need to rehearse on Saturday,” I say, trying to keep my voice casual.

  “Okay, so when do you want to rehearse? She’s free on Sunday, but if that doesn’t work we’d have to wait for—”

  “Let’s get out of this, okay?” I say, gesturing to the lamps. I don’t want to soil this place, this memory, with what I have to do now. I wind through the streetlights as Brad swiftly follows me. I still have my stuffed animal in my hand and my grip is so t
ight I’m afraid the imprints of my fingers might be on him forever. Once we’re on the outskirts of the lights I take a deep breath and continue. “I think I’m done with Resurrection.”

  I have my eyes cast down so I don’t look up to see Brad’s face, but I hear his silence, feel his shock. On Wilshire Boulevard the sound of traffic is increasing with the rush hour. Funny that I’m only noticing it now.

  “You’re not serious,” he finally says.

  I swallow hard, but then put on a lazy smile before lifting my head. “Look, the band’s played out. Traci and Tonio will never take it seriously, they’re not interested in improving, you’re not interested in not improving and it’s not like we’re getting great gigs. I don’t even remember the last time we were booked for more than four days in a month, and at least half of those gigs pay shit. Time to pack it in and move on, don’t you think?”

  “I . . .” He shakes his head as if trying to clear it. The shadows play on his features, exaggerating his distress. “Where is this coming from?” he asks. “Are you . . . do you want to start off on your own? Unattached to a band? If you do, I absolutely support you. You’re right about Traci and Tonio, but you’ll still need instrumentalists. I’m happy to be your drummer for your gigs—”

  “No.”

  Brad’s brow creases as he studies me. “What’s going on, Me—” He starts to say my name but stops.

  “You don’t know what to call me,” I say with a humorless laugh. “It’s why you haven’t said my name all day. I’m not Mercy to you anymore. But I’m not Melody, either, because Melody’s a stranger, right?”