A Field Guide to Deception

by Jill Malone

  Claire sliced Simon’s grilled cheese into quarters and cut off the crust. He watched Bailey work while he ate, as though he were memorizing her technique. The lunch rush had dwindled and now Bailey plated the final order.

  “Why don’t the four of us have drinks on Saturday?” Bailey said.

  Claire, still beside Simon, her knife tapping lightly against the counter, considered. She was curious about Drake. She couldn’t name the last time she and Liv had been out together like adults. “Why not?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Where?” Claire asked.

  “Mizuna at eight?”

  “Works for me. I’ll tell Liv.”

  The plumber was a fuck. Without merit, tact, or skill. He kept running outside to take calls. As he came back up the attic stairs now, Liv asked, “How much longer, do you figure?”

  “Another few days.”

  “It’s done tomorrow, at bid, or I get someone else.”

  He chuckled. “Tough, huh?”

  “It’s done tomorrow.”

  “That could be.”

  She’d turned, and walked back to the floor sander. The floorboards were fir, and not too disreputable. He followed her. His hands were large blocks. Liv ignored him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “You can be done now too.”

  “I don’t need your fucking permission. I’m done when I say.”

  “No,” Liv said. “You’re done now. My client’s not paying for your temper tantrum.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Pack your tools and go.”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Her name’s Liv Tannen,” Drake said from the staircase. “Forgive me, I thought you’d been introduced. Liv’s the builder on this project.”

  His face—swollen and red—trembled around his eyes.

  “Mr. Rory is packing up his tools,” Liv said to Drake. “His work on this project has come to an end.”

  Drake climbed the last stairs to the attic. “Thank you, Mr. Rory.”

  He wavered in the doorway, then turned and raged about the bathroom, muttering invectives. Drake stood nearby, silent, as they waited him out.

  Claire wore a short black skirt, her hair had grown longer through the fall, and she tucked it behind her ears now as she curled her eyelashes. Simon stood on the toilet seat behind her, craning around her body to watch her reflection. He had gloss in his hand, and had applied it to his lips for whole minutes.

  She buttoned her olive-green silk shirt. Scrunched her hair at the back, and turned to Simon. “How does Mama look?”

  “Beautiful,” he said. “Too cute.”

  “Too cute, huh?”

  She pressed her face into his neck, kissed his ears, lifted him. “Sophia’s coming over to play with you tonight while Liv and I are out.”

  “Watch some movies?”

  “Yes. You can watch some movies. Sophia will make popcorn.”

  “I like popcorn.”

  “I know you do.”

  “What about chocolate milk?” Liv said behind them. She held a glass toward Simon. “Do you like chocolate milk?”

  “Oh yes. I like chocolate milk.” He took the glass from her. “Thank you, Liv.”

  “You’re welcome, Simon.” She kissed Claire’s cheek. “You’re gorgeous.”

  “So are you.”

  Liv wore black slacks, a woven sweater, her recently shorn hair feminized her features, softened the lines of her cheek and jaw bones, made her eyes appear brighter and larger.

  In the car, her hand in Liv’s, Claire said, “I’ve missed you. The summer seems like years ago. I’ve missed that kind of leisure, sitting on the deck with you, drinking wine, talking talking talking. I kind of skipped out on you, and Simon. I let the café overwhelm me. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I got so distracted. I won’t let it happen again.”

  Liv leaned across and kissed her. And Claire heard her, as clearly as though she had spoken.

  They met Bailey and Drake at Mizuna. They had a table in the corner, on the far side of the bar, beneath a wrapped, hanging lamp. The posh Symphony-goers had vacated the restaurant, leaving behind young couples whispering to one another over scrumptiously prepared vegetarian entrées. In the corner, surrounded by wine racks, a man plucked a guitar. Her hair pulled up, Bailey wore a vintage blue dress with a choker, and looked stunning. Liv and Claire both stood a moment, staring at her, before they sat down.

  “Who are you?” Liv said to Bailey.

  Bailey blushed, and it made her appear younger, and even more striking. She said, “Claire Bernard, this is Julia Drake.”

  Drake, amused, shook hands, winked at Liv, poured wine for both of them.

  “I’ve just been telling Bailey about the plumber wanting to murder you.”

  Liv shook her head.

  “Is it a death wish?” Bailey asked. “Do you have a death wish?”

  “He sucked. I fired him. He didn’t take it well. End of story.”

  “Oh, Liv,” Drake laughed. “You mutilate stories.”

  “What happened?” Claire asked, and Liv smoothed her hair before responding.

  “The plumber wasn’t what we wanted—his work was adequate, but plodding. He was milking the job. I told him he had to be done by Friday, and he didn’t like that. He didn’t like what I was telling him. He didn’t like me. He had some ideas, and decided to express them. Then Drake walked up the stairs and introduced the two of us.”

  “He had just asked, ‘Who the fuck are you?’when I walked upstairs.”

  “Oh, Liv,” Claire said.

  “What was I supposed to do, not fire him?”

  Bailey laughed. “A big surly guy who doesn’t like you? No, always fire those guys. Did you have to do it on your own?”

  “Wow,” Liv said. “Am I five? Are you parenting me, Bailey?”

  “No. I don’t mean to lecture. I’m worried is all.”

  “Well, next time I’ll call for advice first.”

  “Before or after you hit someone with a beer glass?”

  Liv tried to stand, but Claire put her hand on Liv’s arm and pulled her back to her seat. “Enough,” she said quietly. She looked across at Bailey, “Enough. No more disapproval.”

  They sat like naughty children, glaring at one another. Drake looked at Claire. “Is it terrible that I thought the whole thing was comical? I admired her.”

  “It isn’t terrible,” Claire said, her hand a vise on Liv’s thigh. “Let’s order appetizers.”

  They ordered three starters, another bottle of wine. Drake told the table the story of her last trip, chaperoning six students in Paris. “I had a girl lose her passport, not once, but twice. She lost it at the hotel the first time, and another guest found it two days later. The second time, she left it in a restaurant, and didn’t notice until the next morning that she’d misplaced it. We had to call the restaurant, and she took a taxi over, then caught up with us at the airport. She didn’t even have the decency to panic—either time.”

  “And you?” Claire asked. “Did you panic?”

  “My god, yes. I kept thinking, I’m going to have to leave this girl alone in Paris, and she’s going to walk in front of a bus, or spontaneously combust, or take a plane to Africa by accident once the embassy sorts out a temporary passport. I was genuinely terrified. I swore that was the last time I’d chaperone a trip, but this Christmas I’m going to Rome.”

  “Tough, your life,” Liv said.

  “Honestly, I’d be bored if students weren’t a little crazy.” Drake had an arm around Bailey, and ran her fingertips along Bailey’s upper arm while she talked.

  Their selection of artisan cheeses, figs and olives, bruschetta and breads, and the Greek platter arrived with a bottle of Tamarack Firehouse Red.

  “Honey peppered almonds,” Bailey sighed.

  “This wine,” Claire began, but could say no more. She bit into the goat cheese instead, her palate sparking, her face enraptured.

  �
��What was it you said, Liv?” Drake asked. “When you ate Bailey’s food, you were taking the Bailey tour?” Liv nodded. “I’ve thought a lot about that since you said it, and it’s true. Two bites in, my senses meld together, and I’m transported to another time, another self. Music does the same thing to me. I listen to a Steve Miller song and I’m twenty-two at a house party in the tiniest little strip of a bikini, strutting around on heels as thin as ice picks. I was the hottest thing you’ve ever seen—Jimmy Beyer said so.”

  “Scents do that for me,” Claire said. “That yeasty smell of breast-fed newborn. The papaya lotion my aunt used. They are transportive. That’s exactly right.”

  “I remember,” Liv said, “the first time I had a coconut. I was seven, and my grandfather split one with a hammer. He told me there’d be milk inside, and I hadn’t believed him. I drank that milk and have fucking despised coconut ever since. Even the subtlest taste of it takes me right back to that carport, my grandfather in his snakeskin boots, and that nasty husk of milk.”

  “What?” Drake asked Bailey.

  Bailey had gone still, her face a mask. “Love is like that too: a thread through your life. One you can pick up here at this table and follow backward for years. You can follow it to the bedroom of your best friend, Emma, who you made out with for an entire afternoon the spring you were nine; or to the room in the retirement center where you dusted your grandmother’s teacups while she drank hot water with her knitting rested on her lap; or to the Thunderbird with the screwdriver rammed into the ignition where Doug slid your panties over your Keds and tossed them onto the floor mat.”

  Claire thought of the night Simon was conceived, how it had felt different, more serious. Without even making an excuse, she had pulled on her jeans, grabbed her shirt, which she slid on in the hallway outside his apartment, her bra stuffed in her purse, and left while he showered. A thread to Simon: that seedy room with a loser musician.

  The afternoon she’d first met Liv, Claire had just put Simon down for a nap, and come outside to stroll through the property in the sunshine. Liv’s yellow truck sat in the drive, with the door opened, and the girl bent across the seat, searching. She came upright before Claire reached her, a bottle of water tipped back to her mouth. Claire had stopped, mid stride, had gaped as though this were the rarest of creatures—a girl drinking water. Liv turned then, the water pouring down her chin and shirt, and bowed her head, wiped at her face with her sleeve, and grinned at Claire.

  Or the car by the road the day her aunt died.

  Or Simon in the kitchen at the café, his sleeves pulled over his elbows, rolling dough, flour on his forehead.

  Or waking, that first morning, to Liv pressed against her.

  In the restaurant, Claire sensed Liv’s concentration, and knew Liv was watching her. Bailey’s grandmother was right. Love shifts you.

  “I don’t know what I’ve been thinking,” Claire said. Bailey and Drake stalled across the table. Everyone watchful. “It’s funny, isn’t it? I’m the one who’s supposed to be keeping track of everything—accounting for us all.” She wasn’t drunk, or angry. She knew this. “You were just drinking water. It was simple. Easy. One minute I’m walking in the scrub and the next—” She smacked her palms together. “I don’t know what I’ve been thinking.” Claire put her fingers to her lips, and looked up at Liv. She would not cry.

  “This is all code, right?” Drake said to Bailey.

  “Yes,” Bailey said, her voice brittle.

  They drank coffee at Drake’s. Seated on the plush sofas in the living room, the fire keen. Liv had walked them through the attic project, acknowledged the appreciative murmurs graciously. Strange, to guide Claire through this familiar house, as though Liv herself weren’t a guest here. Liv’s body buoyant, her conversation rapid and jostling like Simon’s freight cars. Drake had kept her a moment in the kitchen to whisper, “She was telling you she’s in love with you, right? Isn’t that what she was saying?”

  “The code, you mean?”

  “Yeah. The code.”

  Liv grinned.

  “Not so distracted now, is she?” Drake teased.

  And so, as easy as wishing, she’d got what she wanted: Claire. She’d sat at the table, hating coconut, and then Claire had startled all of them. Liv thought then, carrying the tray of coffee to the living room, that perhaps the tension in the summer and fall hadn’t been entirely her own creation. She had held herself apart, she had wandered away, and she had pursued a woman who mirrored this behavior. They had stood in the corners of the same room shouting, Over here. Come over here.

  “That woman who always wears a shawl,” Bailey was saying, “the one who liked the oat bars—she’s not due until January, and she’s already huge. She and Sophia have a bet going about who’ll have the shortest labor. I feel like offering foot massages every time I see these women lumbering around.”

  “Sophia’s breasts must weigh fifteen pounds,” Claire said. “I thought mine would split open while I was breastfeeding. That my skin would just burst.”

  “How was your pregnancy?” Drake asked. “What was your labor like?”

  “My pregnancy was easy. I biked until I was thirty-seven weeks, and only gained sixteen pounds. Except for evil evil reflux, and acute absentmindedness, I had no complaints.

  “I was induced a week after my due date, and that went smoothly too. Dee—my aunt—coached me, and I had an epidural; labor lasted nine hours, and was never much worse than uncomfortable. Then Simon. He had this little mullet of black hair. The most beautiful newborn I’ve ever seen, with long slender fingers, and perfect lips.”

  “You weren’t afraid?” Bailey asked.

  “Afraid? You’re joking. The week before they induced me, I cried in the shower every day. I’d just stand in there, weeping. I thought I could fail. I’d read that labor made women the way war made men, and I thought I’d be a miserable coward who deserted.”

  “Labor makes women the way war makes men?” Drake mused. “What a wicked thought.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Claire said. “It troubled me for months. I worried I might behave dishonorably.”

  “Labor isn’t destructive,” Drake said. “War and labor aren’t at all analogous.”

  “They both require courage,” said Liv, “and sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” Bailey said. “How do you figure?”

  “You have to be willing to die—you have to accept that it’s possible.”

  “Help,” Bailey said, “the hyperbole’s killing me.”

  “You’re giving your body over to another organism,” Liv said. “That organism takes your nutrients, saps your energy, grows until it literally cannot thrive in its environment any longer, and has to be ejected. I do think that labor requires sacrifice, Bailey. Less than it did thirty years ago, sure, but a lot can still go wrong.”

  “Well, this is pleasant,” Claire said.

  “Why don’t you two arm wrestle?” Drake said, “And then we can all be friends.”

  “Sorry,” Bailey said lightly. “Am I being aggressive?”

  Inflexible and dismissive, Liv thought, and yes, aggressive as well. The beer glass comment in particular had caught Liv unawares. All evening, Bailey’s behavior had been hostile, almost goading.

  “You’re romanticizing it, Liv.” Bailey said. “You want pregnancy to be heroic—noble rather than biological. I mean, we’re animals, procreation is a basic function of our existence.”

  “Not of mine.”

  “But that’s a choice, isn’t it?” Bailey said.

  “No. That’s a reality: an absence of contact with sperm.”

  “What is all this?” Claire asked, looking from one to the other.

  “Bailey’s dictating,” Liv said.

  “Liv—” Bailey and Claire began.

  “You are, Bailey, you’re dictating. You’re telling me about my own experience as though you were qualified to explain it.”

  “What experience? What am I dictati
ng? Hello, Liv, you’ve never actually been pregnant.”

  “And you’re telling me that was a choice.”

  “Yes, you chose not to sleep with men.”

  “Because every sexually active straight woman chooses pregnancy? That’s spurious.”

  “Liv, what is your argument exactly?”

  “Bailey, we aren’t wombats, or fucking orangutans. We’re analytical and verbal, and our brains are developed enough that we’re conscious of parenthood—of the consequences of behavior. Humans are more than their biology. Simon is a marvel. A child with arteries and musculature and organs, but that will never explain him. You’re minimizing motherhood. You’re minimizing the endeavor of creation.”

  “The endeavor of creation,” Bailey repeated, looking around the room at the others.

  “You said Sophia’s strongest argument was to put your hand on her belly. You’re moved, Bailey, because it’s moving.”

  Drake had leaned back in the sofa, her coffee cup rested on her thigh. The fire crackled beside them. Claire’s hand rubbed the small of Liv’s back, gliding back and forth like an eraser on a blackboard.

  Twenty-seven

  Swim lessons and other advances

  Liv and Simon held hands as they hurried through the snow to the Y. The stretch of pavement beside the curb was particularly treacherous, and Simon bent his knees, leaned into Liv, and let her brace him. His down jacket, and thick navy sweatpants gave him the appearance of bulk, but he was still slight enough for Liv to lift him easily with one arm.

  After the lesson, they were to meet Claire for dinner. It would be dark by then, but now the light glared off the snow so that they squinted as they hurried, spurred by the idea of a heated pool.

  This was Simon’s third lesson. His instructor, Stacy—a petite blond, twenty, taut, and perky—mesmerized him. Whenever she stood near him, he found it difficult to hear, and had to concentrate on each word to ensure it wouldn’t get lost. Her hands were small, and nimble, and she usually held his torso while he kick kick kicked. She loved to yell emphatic things like, Tear it up! and You are so awesome! and Way to push!