Choke on Your Lies

by Anthony Neil Smith

  ELEVEN

  She told it this way:

  Imagine you’re Frances. Imagine you’ve tried to abandon one part of your life to start another. But then, you feel nauseous in the mornings. You have a vague sense of disease. You buy a pregnancy test from a drug store in St. Cloud, use it at a fast food bathroom. And there it is: all knocked-up.

  Now, having not even thought about having kids before, this was a shock—but not as unpleasant as it should’ve felt. In fact, you feel somewhat giddy, and really look forward to telling Ashton. Of course it had to be Ashton’s and not Mick’s. The timing, the precautions you usually took for the swinger club—birth control pills and condoms— slipping during a week of secret rendezvous throughout the Lake Country. But never at Itasca, where you and Mick had wed. That was…off-limits. Almost sacred. You wouldn’t feel right falling in love with someone else at the place you had shared so many good memories with years before.

  Still, you knew it was over with Mick and was waiting for the perfect time to tell him. But what about Ashton’s wife? How could we be so cruel to those who have been so good to us? At least in Stephanie’s case, she had been a part of the swinger’s club. You had even made out with her once or twice, and that was how you really noticed Ashton. You’d worked together for quite some time, sure, but it was like he was a different person at club meetings, a favorite of all the women. With you, though, there was definitely something special. He lingered. He talked more, whispered in your ear.

  It just happened, and that’s something no one should have to ignore in this life. Love is love, and you knew that this was right for you. Mick had been right for another stage in your life, but he would never give you a child. He would never be able to outgrow that grad student poet mentality. You wanted something much more raw and earthy for life’s next act.

  And now you had it. A baby. His baby.

  When you told him, he was thrilled, but sad. Yes, his own child. It would have been wonderful. But he knew it was going to hurt Stephanie, who didn’t deserve that pain. It had really been the same situation as you and Mick—the love was gone, and the friendship that had been left was rusting. For some reason, Ashton thought the swinger’s club might spark the fire again, somehow open up a conversation they hadn’t been willing to have until then. Instead, it showed Ashton what he was missing in his relationship with Stephanie.

  Exactly what he had found with you.

  And even though Mick and Stephanie would be crushed, betrayed, and blindsided, both of you decided it was better to take the plunge than sink back into the muck of What if…?

  Until Carl found out.

  Of course, so obvious. In his quest to keep you as his trophy, Carl had grown suspicious and was having you followed. You should’ve known that from the cameras at your house. He’d known all along, and he wasn’t pleased about it. So he followed, he taped, and he held it over your heads—end this affair or he would tell your husband and Ashton’s wife.

  Ashton wanted to punch him. He was so angry. And you loved him so much for what he did next. He said, “Fine, do it. Frannie and I are in love, and she’s having my baby. We were going to tell them ourselves anyway.”

  That should have been the end of the conversation. Carl should have realized he had lost you forever.

  But this was Carl. He sat back in his chair, thought for a minute and said, “In that case, you’ll all lose your jobs here at the university. I’m sure I can pressure someone in the club to make sure Stephanie loses hers, too. You won’t be ruining your own careers, but theirs as well. With this job market…” Carl clucked his tongue. “I don’t know what to tell you. It will be rough finding a job as solid as this one.”

  You couldn’t believe it. You knew the man was tough and manipulative, but this was inhuman.

  “What are you saying, Carl?”

  “Is this child worth all those lives?”

  Yes. Yes it was. Of course it was. That was the answer. They would prevail, they would survive. And you fully expected those same words to leap from Ashton’s mouth and wither Carl’s nuts like they were raisins. Come on, baby. Show the Provost he hold no power over us.

  But the words didn’t come. You were stunned. A blink and a glance showed his shoulders low, his head bowed. He couldn’t do it. Too many innocents on his conscience.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You’ll decide now.”

  He shook his head. “Then I quit. You make damned sure to give me a good reference.” He turned to Frances. “I’m sorry. I want to be with you, but not like…this. Not if it takes destroying other people.”

  You, martyr that you are—

  *

  “Jesus, Octavia, cut the melodrama. Get to the point.”

  She flashed a look through narrow slits like a knife thrower going for a crotch shit, except aiming higher than she should. “I do it my way.”

  *

  —Martyr that you so longed to be for the cause of love. If it took ending your pregnancy to ease his troubled soul, as much as you didn’t want to, that’s what you had to do.

  So you ended the pregnancy, thinking that would give your love a chance to bloom, unburdened by those others in our lives.

  But Carl still wouldn’t budge. Neither would Ashton. He made it clear that it was over between you. But you knew better. He was saying that because of her. Stephanie didn’t even realize what she had in Ashton, how sacrificial he could be, and if he would only see how you understood that about him more than she ever could.

  Stephanie took him for granted!

  While he tried to patch things with Stephanie and get them out of Dodge, you broke the news to Mick—you were done.

  But then…my God how you loved that house. And you couldn’t move in with Carl, no indeed. Gave you the chills thinking about it. You didn’t plan to hurt Mick. In fact, it would be healthy for him to get out of that place, meet new people. He hadn’t been writing much at all the past several years, and when he did it wasn’t very good. All because of you. He was so madly in love with you. With the very idea of you. And it was killing his creativity.

  You saw it as a necessary step in saving Mick, not destroying him.

  If you’d only known that Octavia would see through you like a wet piece of toilet paper, maybe you could’ve been spare the humiliation when that obese bitch revealed all the dirty details—and they weren’t like that at all! Forget facts. She had them in the wrong context! The woman made you out to be a monster in league with Carl!

  All you’d done was ask Carl if there was some sort of legal maneuver to help keep the house when you divorced Mick. He was the one who brought up the Quit Claim. He was the one who brought up the “digital signature”. Not her. If you weren’t able to have the love you wanted, and you didn’t want to continue dating the beastly Provost, who basically killed your child, and you no longer wanted to keep Mick’s talent chained to the walls of your heart, then keeping your cozy, safe home all to your newly lonesome self was the next best option.

  It shouldn’t have turned into this. Now Mick hated you. Carl had cut you adrift. Ashton was still denying his true passion and trying to reconcile with Stephanie. And the image of your unborn child still sneaked into your dreams at night.

  Mick was happy again, so it seemed, spending so much time with Ashton’s wife while he was out of town. How dare she! Once again, you had the moral upper-hand. After all Ashton had given up for her, at the first sign of trouble, she’d grabbed poor Mick by the cock and led him around like a prize, well, rooster.

  *

  “Now wait a minute!”

  “Do you want the truth, dear, or do you want me to make you look good?”

  “Would you just tell me what the hell Frances had to do with—no, that’s impossible.”

  Octavia didn’t want to look at me. Probably because she wanted so badly to say I told you so.

  *

  You had lost it all. You’d never meant to hurt anyone, but look at all the debris i
n your wake. And even when you made that last ditch effort to at least save your marriage…no, it wasn’t that. You just didn’t want to go home alone that night. You needed someone to explain yourself to, give yourself to, so that you wouldn’t feel so rotten inside.

  But then he turned you down. In front of that woman and in front of Stephanie and Carl and…Moose. You left feeling lower than you’d ever felt in your life.

  At least Moose, as awful as he was, offered you a cigarette, a ride home, and a shoulder to cry on. So later that night, when you were sucking his cock, listening to his filthy mouth, enduring his icky tongue, something broke. Some call it a soul. Others, an organic chemical reaction in the brain that gave us our distinct personalities. Whatever you thought it was, it felt like it was crumbling to ash as Moose slammed your ass from behind, making weird wheezy grunts.

  That was when you decided that Stephanie couldn’t have Ashton. You were going to win him back no matter what. You didn’t even let Moose finish. Stopped it right where you were and told him to get out. You were too worn down to change the sheets that smelled like him, so you slept on the sofa downstairs, if you could even call it sleep.

  But then Ashton wouldn’t accept your phone calls in the following days. The only one he did, maybe the third or fourth day, he told you, “Quit calling me. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “But she doesn’t love you the way I can! You don’t even know! She’s sleeping with Mick now!”

  You thought he was thinking about it. A long moment of silence. Then, “I know that already. But…he doesn’t mean anything to her. I deserved it. And we’re going to work it out.”

  You couldn’t let that happen. Someone needed to talk to Stephanie, make her understand that this wasn’t just about sex. Shouldn’t she already know that? Hadn’t she fucked plenty of men while in Carl’s club? Unless she was going along to get along. It didn’t matter. You needed to be the strong one here. You needed to tell her face to face, civilly. That’s the way women did things. You might have sharp things to say to each other, but in the end you were sure Stephanie would see it your way. After all, you’d effectively swapped husbands already, hadn’t you? Why not make it permanent?

  What you didn’t expect to find when you dropped by for a visit was your husband’s car. And he didn’t leave. It was as if he had moved in, except for occasional jaunts out for food, it appeared. You stay vigilant. It was important. Ashton needed to know about this. But he still wouldn’t answer the phone. He’d mentioned something about flying home to see Stephanie, and you were running out of time.

  You never thought you’d become a stalker. That wasn’t it, though. These people were laughing in Ashton’s face! You had to kill your unborn child to save him, and look at how Mick and Stephanie repaid that sacrifice—fucking all afternoon, in the bedroom, the shower, the kitchen. You could see them through the curtains. She was up on the counter, above the dishwasher, while Mick was standing on a phonebook in order to be high enough. Going at it where food is prepared! You were disgusted. You couldn’t tear yourself away.

  You finally got your break when you listened to them argue because Ashton had planned to come home so he and Stephanie could talk it out, work it through. Mick said he didn’t feel comfortable about it. “Right now, he might say all the right words, and then just a few months from now you’ll regret keeping him.”

  But she had steel in her backbone. Good for her. She said he had to go and that she would call him in a few days when they’d had time to think.

  Mick did his passive-aggressive thing, all puppy dog sadness and vows of love, all the while portraying someone being victimized. You rolled your eyes. You’d lived through plenty of those acts.

  Once he was gone, you waited a while before knocking on the door. After all, she would need to take a shower, get dressed, try to feel like she held the power again rather than these men. So you waited, and waited, and waited. And finally, you walked up the drive, knocked on the door…

  *

  “This is crazy,” I said. I was a trembling wreck, unable to sit down, pacing every square inch of open space in Harriet’s apartment.

  “She went there to talk. But Stephanie was no wilting violet. She grew angry, and she gave Frances a real piece of her mind. I don’t think Frances would have ever premeditated the act. That’s why the knife was from Stephanie’s own kitchen, and why Fran left it there, too much in the heat of the moment to think about taking it or wiping it down. That’s why Stephanie had defense wounds on her hands and arms. It’s why your wife aimed for the softest and easiest kill—her throat.”

  “But, but, wouldn’t the cops know that by now? Wouldn’t they have her prints? Her DNA?”

  “It takes days and weeks for that.” Octavia snapped her fingers at Jennings, who came over to help her off the couch. “But the cops figured it out. They are pretty smart about these things. They knew you would look for Frances. The only reason you haven’t been able to is because of me. I’ve been holding you back because I didn’t want to see you in this any deeper.”

  I got in my friend’s face. “You what? You what? I’m a grown man, goddamnit! I’m not your child.”

  Octavia spoke softly. “But you behave like one. You act on your feelings, and that can be very dangerous. If I had let you find her, the police would make damned sure you were hooked to this case until they stuck the needle in. You needed a buffer.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t have any proof. A guess is all. It makes sense. I’m willing to bet she spent one night in a hotel somewhere, deciding exactly what to do next.”

  “Where?”

  “Please, if you wait a day or two longer, I promise—”

  “Where the fuck is she?”

  Octavia closed her eyes and turned her face from mine. “It would have to be somewhere where she felt at peace, surrounded by good memories. Someplace beautiful before she, well, settled her accounts.”

  I grabbed my keys from the coffee table and was out the door while they shouted behind me. Maybe I could stop her. I had to. It was a long drive, over three hours, and I didn’t have my cell phone. I would have to stop for gas. But I had to get there.

  Lake Itasca, the place where Fran and I were married.

  And the place she was going to kill herself.

  TWELVE

  I started out pushing myself, faster and faster, thinking it was a race against time. But then I thought how selfish it all was. Why not call the park and explain what was going on? Or Detective Fitzgerald? Why did I think I could make any difference.

  Octavia was right. This was one where I was better off letting others do the work for me. Let the cops find her. Let them bring the news to me. Let them think I was just a grieving widower, not an active participant in her demise.

  But what really made me slow down was the realization that Octavia had another reason for holding back on me. A far more depressing and concrete one: it takes a drowned body a few days before it floats.

  I didn’t care. She still should not have strung me along like that. Maybe we could have even prevented it, although Octavia told me she didn’t figure it out until it was too late. I doubted that.

  I slowed down, tried not to visualize the scene. Tried to imagine the good times instead. Our wedding at Preacher’s Grove—a small affair, but the late spring sun and the breeze through the tall trees, the Unitarian minister’s brilliant description of love, our vows painstakingly crafted, a few of our students playing guitar, saxophone, and oboe. Some Sting songs, one or two REM tunes, and then Frances, barefoot in her simple, cream-colored sleeveless dress, wildflowers for a bouquet, made her way down the hill, escorted by both of her parents (although they had long since married others), to the strains of “More Than This”, the 10,000 Maniacs version. Lake Itasca behind us.

  Cold. Dead. Facedown.

  *

  I arrived near dusk, turned into the entrance, and was relieved to find a quiet, peaceful drive along the main road. It got
my adrenaline going. Octavia had been wrong, and I still had time. Just the very fact I’d figured it out would mean the world to Frances, and I was sure we could reason with the police on the murder charge, right? Self-defense? Temporary insanity? I could help her. I could be her strength again, each step of the way.

  Then I rounded a corner that brought me to the main Visitor’s Center and the Douglas Lodge, an old-fashioned log cabin hotel with antique furniture in the rooms and a wonderful sitting parlor and exquisite restaurant on the main floor. We stayed there for several nights after the wedding. This time, however, the lots were filled with police cars. An officer stood guard at the four-way stop. My stomach sank. I just…knew.

  I rolled down the window as the officer was preparing to tell me I couldn’t go any further, and I decided to take a chance.

  “I’m the husband.”

  He rested his hands on top of the car, let out a big breath, and said, “You’re Mick Thooft?”

  I showed him my license.

  The officer said, “Sir, I’m very sorry. If you wouldn’t mind parking over here, I’ll have someone come for you.”

  Then he spoke into his radio as I pulled into the lot outside the hotel. I heard, “The husband…yes…he’s here now.”

  As I slid into a spot, I noticed another car, one I had seen earlier in the day, several places down from mine. Standing out front of it, talking to a different officer, was Ashton. He was pacing, gesturing, not taking this well at all. I climbed out and stepped onto the sidewalk beside him.

  “Ashton.”

  He turned to me. For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me again. The officer might have said, “You know him?” I don’t remember. I remember those drained eyes of Ashton’s taking me in, and then him launching himself at me.

  I flinched. I raised my arms. Stepped back. But he reached for me and stumbled into a big embrace. He broke down crying.

  “Mick, Mick, no, no, no, they’re wrong, please tell me they’re wrong, please, god, what am I going to do without her? What will I do, Mick? I’m so sorry, so so so sorry, please, it can’t be happening.”