A Field Guide to Deception

by Jill Malone

  In the office, Claire kicked her chair, tore some credit card offers into coin-sized pieces, thought about abandoning her pretense—she’d spent the last hour sharpening two boxes of pencils, and separating those irritating little paper clips from the larger ones—for a run along the road. Quickly thought better. Sat down, fidgeted, stretched her fingers like a pianist and attacked the keyboard.

  Five more chapters, and two months to finish them; she had this well under control. The anxiety, then, was inexplicable. She thought of Liv’s hands, the taper of her fingers, the nicks to her skin. Claire stood so suddenly that her chair pitched backwards. She yanked on her running shoes and fled outside.

  Liv and Simon, barefoot, lay asleep on the recliners. The umbrella covering their faces and torsos, the afternoon a thick, wavy dream, Claire watched them while she stretched. Her shins ached from the pavement. She decided on ribs for dinner, buttered corn, baked beans, and peas. She bent over, palms in the grass, and felt her hamstrings protest. Running. Not her best plan ever. She’d just shifted the ache to a different set of muscles.

  Simon woke first, sneaked peas from the bowl on the table, while Claire grilled. They had to wake Liv for dinner; even the smell of ribs hadn’t done it, Claire basting on her father’s dense tangy sauce.

  “All afternoon?” Liv asked.

  “The entire thing,” Claire answered.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “As punishment, you’ll do dishes.”

  “You can’t think of anything worse?”

  “Give me a little time.”

  “Anything,” Liv said. “Anything at all.” And then she gasped, “Deer!” and ran to the railing of the deck, motioning for Simon to follow her as she clambered up. Five large animals, thirty meters away, ate from the molasses lick Claire had left in the meadow. “What do you think?” Liv asked the child.

  “Ride on them,” he said.

  “You’d have to catch them first.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, and jumped down.

  “No, no.” She laughed, and waved him back. “They’re having dinner. Let’s just watch them.”

  After their own dinner, Simon brought all the Sandra Boynton books down to Liv to read at the table. His mother drank wine, watched the blond head beside the black one. Liv looked leaner than she had even six weeks ago. Her body tanned and spotted, her hair winged out a bit over her ears. She read playfully as Simon turned the pages.

  “Will you read one to me, Simon?” Liv asked.

  He nodded, opened a book, and began to read, mimicking perfectly his mother’s own reading voice. Both women held their breath.

  “Simon, can you read another?” his mother asked.

  He read them all. They sent him inside to get more, and he read those too. At the end, they gave him a small bag of chocolate-covered almonds for a prize.

  “Did you know he could read?” Claire asked after he’d been put to bed.

  “I had no idea. Except he turned the pages just as I finished reading, so I knew he was following along.”

  Later, into a second bottle of wine, she asked Liv if she’d considered having children. Liv laughed, shook her head, “I don’t sleep with men.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “Didn’t?”

  “Artificial insemination.”

  “Promise?” Liv asked.

  “Promise.”

  “Did your aunt know?”

  “No. I told her I got drunk and met someone. She always loved a brawling story.”

  Liv’s eyebrows knitted together. “Can you afford all this—the house, the kid, this place—on your own?” She stretched her hand out as though to cover everything.

  “My aunt paid for this place years ago. I have savings, and she left us money; we’re more than fine.”

  “Do you want a cigarette?”

  Claire took one, knelt against Liv to have it lit. She could smell her, the musk of her body. Inhaling, she cocked her head back and glared at the stars.

  “Where do you go at night?” Claire asked quietly.

  “I drive around.”

  “Do you pick up girls?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it make you feel better?”

  “Not yet.” Liv stared at Claire’s thighs. Her nipples were hard, her breathing irregular. Claire dragged from her cigarette to have something in her mouth.

  Through the dark, noises carried, too heavy to be wind or leaves. They couldn’t see the deer anymore, but they knew they were there.

  Mushrooms could look like blown glass: violet or brilliant orange. They could grow up through asphalt. Some were hula skirts carved from the meat of a coconut. Some were golden martini glasses. Tender, as various as sea creatures, mushrooms oozed and blossomed. In a basket, they might be mistaken for candies. A bouquet of mushrooms, a colonizing fungus: they were delicate, dangerous, ancient, and frequently delicious.

  Claire had not typed a single word of text. Instead, this morning, she’d flipped through the file of labeled photographs studying the samples. They might be alien. They might be poisonous. They might make the world a bold, psychedelic dream.

  Her head ached. Uncertain which had ruined her most effectively—Liv or the wine—Claire had left the deck with the spins and sat on the edge of the bathtub, willing herself not to be ill. Dee had called mushrooms sea angels. In the photographs, Claire thought most looked like they were melting, and a moment later would be gone: the vanishing Witch’s Hat, the drawn Alcohol Inky.

  Why did Liv pick up girls? Claire hadn’t asked, but she’d wanted to. She wasn’t even certain how she had known to ask about the girls at all. As soon as the question formed itself in her mouth, she had known the answer. Does it make you feel better? What had she meant? And why had Liv answered? Claire couldn’t understand any of it.

  Claire stopped at a photograph of Dee: wild grey curls framed her face as she crouched on the ground beside the spined sphere of the Dusky Puffball. And in the next, Simon beside her, hands on his knees, concentration in his gaze. Abandoning the file, Claire sat at the computer and began to batter away at the tedious identifying descriptions: markings, measurements, coloring, seasonality, habitat, range, edibility. The tiny, trod upon kingdom of mycology, the devil’s toenails, her aunt’s renown closing around her more tightly with every tap of her fingers.

  Simon kept his hand on the side of the wheelbarrow. Against this load of fencing, Liv yanked and drove. How had it happened? Claire pressed against her, voice no more than a sigh, and Liv tells her she drives around at night to pick up girls. Dear god. You king fuck of all time. Liv stopped to spit and heard Simon do the same.

  “Nice one, buddy,” she said encouragingly.

  He waited, hand still on the wheelbarrow. Red monkey hat blocking half of his expression from her. She pressed on, smothering curses. And more violent hammering, her back and shoulders raging, a desperate fury roused in her like a creature surfacing from some incomprehensible depth that cannot re-submerge.

  Simon handed her nails, and held the hammer while she grabbed more wood. Already, she had pissed away possibility: she had torn the petals off. Does it make you feel better?

  “Oh, Simon, I’ve spoiled everything.”

  He handed her another nail.

  Claire had baked potatoes for dinner. They ate in silence. Each fork set down on the plate like a white flag. Bees hovered about and had to be thrashed with rolled magazines.

  Seven

  Murdering mother figures

  Liv had had a letter from her parents, recycled from the pad in the kitchen—the back of each sheet had phone numbers, cryptic messages, and lists for cottage cheese, salad stuff, luncheon meat. As always, her mother wrote the body, and her father added a postscript. They were well, had stayed with Liv’s sister for several weeks, and—wait for it—fallen even more in love with the grandkids. You wouldn’t believe, her mother wrote, how precocious they are. Her father had scribbled a note about a sports team she’d never heard o
f, or possibly something to do with golf. Before she folded it away, Liv read it three times. A lot of words to say so little.

  She and Simon had taken their shoes off to soak their feet in the river. It was a shame, Liv thought, that they didn’t have a dog. If she could see him now, Liv’s mother would have called Simon towheaded, but Liv thought golden-haired whenever the sunlight struck him. The child glowed.

  The fence, finished at last, and praised in detail by Claire, had done much to improve diplomatic relations. Liv had not left the house at night, not even for a supply run. She would never have vocalized her rationale for this, nor would she have needed to.

  “Simon, I think we should get a present for Mommy. Do you want to get her a present?”

  “OK,” Simon said and stood up to go.

  “What should we get?” Liv asked.

  “Ice cream.”

  “How about something that won’t melt?”

  He grabbed his shoes and socks, and waited for Liv to put them on.

  “Maybe something for camping.” Liv said, wiping his wet feet off with her shirt before shuffling on his socks.

  They went to REI and found a new camp stove. “Something that melts, after all,” Liv said. She let the idea man pick out some Haribo gummi bears. On the way home, they stopped for strawberry milkshakes.

  Claire actually blushed when Simon handed her the REI bag. She looked up at Liv and then took out the stove and squealed almost exactly like her son. They put the stove together and heated some hot chocolate to be drunk from tin mugs as though they were already on an adventure.

  Simon ran inside and dragged the tent out to them. They set it up in the meadow, inflated the pads, and unfurled the sleeping bags. Simon kept zipping himself in and out, a headlamp around his neck like a rugged necklace.

  When Claire put him to bed, he noticed the tent had only two sleeping bags.

  “Three,” he told his mother.

  “Three what?”

  “We need three of them,” he said, anxious, pointing at the bags.

  “Honey, Liv doesn’t want to squeeze in here with us.”

  “Three.” He was crying now. “We need three.”

  “But it’s so small,” Claire said, pointing to the walls of the tent. “We’d be sleeping on top of one another.”

  “Three,” he cried again. Repeating the word in a rapid wail.

  “Simon,” his mother said, almost angry. “Stop it this instant, or you’ll sleep indoors.”

  He went on crying, and she left him to it. At the ceramic fireplace, Liv had heard everything. Claire’s face burned, and her skin felt too tight, but she walked toward the deck as though it didn’t cost her anything to breathe, to walk, to ask, in as even a voice as she could manage, “Do you want a beer?”

  Behind her, Simon’s crying stopped abruptly. Then he shouted Liv’s name and wailed on.

  “Jesus,” Claire murmured. There was nowhere to go to escape this woman, this tether Claire felt taut between them. She couldn’t look at Liv, couldn’t bear to know what she’d see in her expression. If it would be something besides desire, something incredulous or bored or reluctant. Claire needed more time. A drink, and more time, and then maybe she could toss off some nonchalant proposal. Feel like squeezing into a two-man tent with a little kid who thrashes, and a woman who grinds her teeth? If you think just standing here is awkward, how about we all pile into a tent? “Do you want a beer?” she asked again.

  “No,” Liv said. Her voice wrong, the word jagged.

  “No?” Claire repeated, not understanding. Liv left through the scrub, the stalks grabbing at her bare legs. Claire thought to call her back, but couldn’t somehow, and stood instead beside the unlit kindling, her body as still as the ceramic fireplace, as still as Simon now in the tent, and then, the truck kicking gravel.

  “Wait,” the girl said, and leaned over Liv to pull something from her glove compartment. “I want you to wear this.”

  Surprised, Liv almost asked where the girl was from. Reminded herself it didn’t matter, and snapped the glove on.

  In the bar again, she found another one, like a perky cheerleader, the girl’s skirt flared at mid-thigh. Liv followed her to the bathroom and braced her against the sink to screw her.

  From the street, Bailey’s house looked asleep, the porch light off like everything else. Liv lit another cigarette and breathed. She felt worse now than before, sex a failing palliative. Go home, she thought. Give this up and go home. She saw Claire stepping from the tent, embarrassed. Embarrassed! The kid’s scream approaching the frequency of bats, and Claire just pretended like nothing was happening, like they could have a beer, and chat, when Claire couldn’t even look at her. Couldn’t even say something like, “What a sweet kid,” or “How crazy is that?” or “Do you want to sleep in the tent with us?” No. I don’t want a beer. Liv slammed the door to the truck. No. That’s not what I want. She turned the engine over. No. The roar of the truck drowned the word as she accelerated, and raced out of town, and across the bridges, and down the snaking road to the Douglas-firs. She ran along the gravel and dirt and grass and wood and stone to Claire’s room. The bed empty, she threw open the door to Simon’s room, where his, of course, was empty as well. Both of them asleep in the tent in the backyard: an adventure inspired by a new stove.

  Claire could hear the saw even from the office. Though Liv had cordoned herself in the garage with the doors shut, the saw blade shrilled through the property. Another paragraph and then she would take Simon to swim at Comstock. For a moment, she considered an extended trip. Take the laptop and finish the book in Seattle at her parents’ condo. That actually appealed to her less than her current living situation.

  “Simon,” Claire called, still typing, “let’s go to the park.”

  They swam together and had ice-cream cones afterward. In no hurry to go home, Claire rented some movies, shopped for groceries, let the day slip away. Simon, fractious and hungry, made for an unpleasant companion.

  Field guide to a particularly trying day: Hooray for the heroic mother of tantrum boy. Way to keep birthrates down.

  On the drive back, Claire considered having a sitter come to give her a night off. And then what? Troll the bars like Liv? She realized with amusement that she was furious. Liv had left just in the middle of something—the beginning really—and she had torn away like some impetuous and spoiled teenager. Intolerable behavior that Claire found herself wishing she could describe to her aunt: she stalked off before I could explain anything. I’d actually decided to sleep with her, instead, she runs off without saying anything, and stays out all night, picking up god knows what. I don’t know what to do with her.

  To which her aunt would have replied what, exactly? Claire had no inkling. Just what you need, another destructive self-loather. In all probability, Dee would have laughed and said, This is getting good. Tell me more.

  Claire put Simon to bed and walked out to the garage. During a break in the sawing, she knocked on the door and called for Liv. In a moment, goggles and gloves still on, sawdust light over her entire body, Liv poked her head out.

  “We should talk,” Claire said.

  Liv pushed the door wide and stood back. Stacked against the back of the garage by the riding mower were the finished pieces, and on the sawhorses, several long sheets still to be run through the table saw. She’d covered most of the garage with tarps to simplify cleanup.

  Field guide to a completely mystifying courtship: if you don’t get it, then you’ve got it.

  Perched on the riding mower, Liv took off her gloves and pulled the goggles down around her neck. She wore a thin, white tank top and belted shorts. Her silence, Claire realized, made this more awkward.

  Claire had prepared a speech, a sort of romantic declaration. It included a comparison between Liv’s eyes and a certain unique mushroom. But right now, Claire couldn’t remember the speech, not a word of it, not even the name of the mushroom shaded Liv’s particular brown.

 
“Come here,” Claire said.

  Liv came toward her without hesitating. Claire pulled the goggles over her head, and then brushed the sawdust from Liv’s forehead, along her jaw, away from her lips. She slid Liv’s tank top and bra down her torso, traced each tattoo. Topless now, fine sawdust over Claire as well, Liv remained motionless. Claire unfastened Liv’s belt and let her shorts drop to her boots.

  The booted knight! That was the mushroom. Brown rimmed with amber, like these eyes. Claire touched Liv’s eyebrows. “You built this garage,” she whispered, as she pushed Liv backwards toward the shelves. “You made a place for me. Here. You made this place.” Claire pushed against Liv’s pelvic bone and kissed her mouth. At first Liv submitted, until finally, when Claire bit harder, Liv rent her shirt and bit back.

  Claire wrote out the check to Liv and met her in the kitchen. On a chair beside the sink, Simon filled her plastic water bottles, while Liv packed oranges and a bagel in her day bag. Her father had left a voicemail on Liv’s cell: her mother had breast cancer and was having two malignant lumps removed. Her surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning; he just wanted Liv to know. She’d been trying to reach them all morning, calling intermittently, but no one picked up at home or on her father’s cell. She’d called her sister, and left messages there too.

  “I have to go,” she’d told Claire, her face sallow, her eyes incapable of concentration. “A week, maybe less. I don’t know.”

  Claire handed her the check now, and picked Simon up. He clung to his mother, in that way Liv found magical and ancient and simian. Both faces drawn and strangely haggard as though the grief were theirs rather than Liv’s. She kissed Simon, and looked at Claire, and fled from the kitchen.