If I Lie

by Corrine Jackson

  I’m heading through the lobby to George’s room when Darlene calls my name from the front desk.

  “Sophie! George said to tell you he’s out having a test done. He’ll be back soon if you want to wait.”

  “Thanks, Darlene.”

  I stride toward the stairs to wait for George in his room. It seems like lately he’s out for more and more tests.

  “Sophie?”

  The trembling voice is familiar, and I turn to see who called my name.

  Uncle Eddy stares at me. “Sophie Quinn, is that you?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Uncle Eddy is five years younger than my father, but he’s not aging well. The years have softened him. His muscles have dissipated, leaving behind skin and bones. He is too skinny, and what’s left of his blond hair has begun to gray. It takes all of two seconds to understand that he is very sick. Maybe dying. I’ve seen too many men at the hospital look the same way.

  “Sophie Quinn?” he asks again, coming closer.

  I nod, unable to speak.

  “I knew it! I heard that woman call you, and you’re the spitting image of your mother with all that hair.” Uncle Eddy reaches me and pulls me into a hug. My arms remain locked to my sides, and his hug transforms into an awkward pat on the back as he realizes it is unwelcome.

  The whites of his eyes are yellow, I notice, when I pull away. Kidneys are shot, then. Corporal Lewis in room 308 has been on dialysis for a year, so I know the signs.

  “You’re all grown up now, aren’t you?”

  Six years’ll do that.

  “I saw you,” I blurt out. “And my mom.”

  See what happens when you open your mouth? You say things you meant to hold tight.

  “Here at the hospital?”

  I nod again.

  “You mind if we sit? It’s hard for me to be on my feet too long.”

  He’s breathing heavily as I follow him to a corner of the lobby. We sit a couple of seats away from where my mother walked past me a few weeks ago without recognizing me.

  Uncle Eddy pauses, trying to catch his breath. After a minute he says, “Forgive me, Sophie.”

  I know he means for taking a moment to rest, but I say, “For what? Stealing my mom?”

  Geez, I sound so hateful, I hardly recognize my voice. Worse, his skin fades to a sickly gray shade, and his eyes close. I’m worried I’ve shocked him into having a stroke.

  I wait for his eyes to open—wintergreen like my father’s—and I can see he’s okay before I rise. It was childish to think I could tell off him and my mom. Like it would make things better and make the past just go poof! As if. Then maybe we could all go back to our house for a family reunion and sweet tea on the porch. Just brilliant.

  She left. What difference does it make that she’s back?

  “I’m going to go—”

  “Your mother wants to see you, Sophie.”

  “Don’t call me that.” My words surprise us both.

  “Sophie?” he asks. “What do you want me to call you?”

  SophieTopperQuinnQ. For every name I have, there is someone who objects to it. I don’t even know what to call myself.

  “Nothing. I don’t want you to call me anything.”

  “O-kay . . .” He draws the word into two syllables, and I can tell he’s thinking I’m some screwed-up teenager hiding a drug addiction and hefting an attitude through a “difficult phase.”

  Whatever. I sigh. “Someone’s waiting on me. I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait! What should I tell your mom?”

  His raised voice draws attention. Darlene watches from the front desk. A nurse from Don’s floor glances at us as she passes. People don’t need another reason to gossip about me.

  “That’s up to you. Honestly, if she wants to see me, I’m sure she can figure out how to work a phone. If I remember right, she was a tramp, not stupid.”

  For a moment, Uncle Eddy looks like he wants to slap me. I’m almost daring him to, so I can hit back, him being sick or not. I blame him. And her. Everything shitty about my life began the day they left.

  Uncle Eddy’s lips narrow with righteous indignation.

  Anger hums in his voice when he speaks, but the words come slowly, as if he’s a drill sergeant lashing a plebe. “You have a right to be mad, so I’ll let that go. Once. Your mom will be waiting for you at the Blue Dawn Café in Spring Lake tomorrow at oh-nine-hundred. Got that?”

  I won’t feel guilty. Not because of this man. No way will I let him boss me around. My father is bad enough. I toss my bag over my shoulder, throwing as much disdain as I can into the look that I give him.

  I shrug. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t be there.”

  “Oh-nine-hundred!” he calls after me, but I’m gone, striding past Darlene and slamming through the door to the stairwell.

  The better to hide until the trembling stops and I know I won’t lose it.

  * * *

  I’m too angry to stay at the hospital.

  George doesn’t deserve to have me take my temper out on him, so I leave him a note in his room, telling him I don’t feel well. Then I drive out to Grave Woods, where some snow lingers, though most of it has seeped into the ground and disappeared. Any day now, my father will have his garden.

  I have the camera, but I don’t take any pictures. Instead, when I arrive at the graves I lie on the ground, flat on my back between Josephine and Thomas, and stare up at an icicle hanging from a branch overhead. The ice sweats languid drops that trickle to the tip of the ice-stick where they dangle, suspended for one . . . two . . . three seconds before gravity takes over. I study each new drop, predicting how long it can delay the inevitable free fall.

  One . . . two . . . three . . .

  One . . . two—

  I am bits of who everyone thinks I am. One . . . Blake’s Q. Two . . . Carey’s Quinn. Three . . . Sophie Jr., taking after her whore mom. Four . . . middle name Topper for Uncle Eddy the Honorable. Which piece is really me?

  I’m plummeting and terrified of hitting rock bottom.

  I want to be someone new.

  Sophie Topper Quinn, no more.

  * * *

  I wake up because I’m shivering so hard, my bones might shatter.

  Day has faded into evening, which means I’ve been in the woods for hours. A glance at my watch and I know Dad is going to freak because I’ve missed dinner. Panic drives me to my feet, but it takes forever to get back to the Jeep when I get lost in the dark.

  I’m two hours late when I pull in to the driveway. It won’t matter that I’m always on time. People never see how good you are. Fuck up once, though, and it’s like you are wearing a neon sign.

  My father’s heard my car. He marches out onto the porch, and he’s Lieutenant Colonel Cole Quinn marching on the enemy.

  “Damn it, Quinn! Where the hell have you been?”

  The heat from the car hasn’t thawed me. I’m hugging myself to get warm and my teeth chatter when I try to answer. “I—”

  He waves his hand, brushing away my excuses. “I don’t want to hear it! You get your ass into the house. You’re the most damned irresponsible . . . I’ve had it with you, kid.”

  He leaves me standing in the driveway with my mouth open. The door bangs shut behind him, and I can hear him crashing through the house, slamming doors as he goes. Yelling about what a fuck-up I am. How sad for him to get saddled with a daughter like me.

  The unfairness of it slaps me in the face.

  I don’t think.

  Every person has a limit.

  There is a small shed set off to the side of the garden. It’s where my father keeps his gardening supplies. Funny how the green weed killer and plant-food bottles look so similar. It’s easy enough to swap the contents.

  My father’s so religious about feeding his plants, loving them and hovering over them every day. If I add up every minute he’s spent in this garden over the past six years, I know it will outweigh the time he’s spent with me.

>   I hope the garden stays barren.

  * * *

  “Quinn, wake up. Shh . . . You’re okay.”

  My father shakes me and I’m awake all at once, startled to find him sitting on the edge of my bed with his hand on my shoulder.

  “There you are,” he says as my eyes focus on him. He drags his work-roughened fingers under my eyes, wiping away tears I didn’t know I was crying.

  I am six parts ocean.

  My father’s presence confuses me after our silent warfare. “Dad?” I stop because my throat feels raw.

  “You were screaming Carey’s name,” he explains. “Must’ve been one helluva nightmare, too,” he adds gruffly. “I think you even woke Rueger.”

  We listen to the Lab barking from next door.

  I remember the dream now. I’d been watching the news. A reporter had come on to announce the execution of a prisoner-of-war. The shot had switched to a home video of masked men with swords. Carey knelt before them, and I’d watched as one man cut off his head, holding it up to the camera in triumph. Even now, I shudder reliving it, knowing it could actually happen. Has happened.

  “What if he doesn’t come back?” I sound like I did when I was a little kid, asking when my mom would come home.

  My father hooks my hair behind my ear, like he used to when I was younger and had bad dreams, and I remember how he once-upon-a-time loved me. I clasp his warm hand between mine to make him stay with me, but he pulls away after a few short seconds.

  “He’s a good man. Don’t you give up on him, okay?”

  I nod. The house creaks and knocks around us, and Rueger still barks in the distance.

  “I didn’t know how upset you were, Quinn,” my father says. “I came down hard on you.”

  Tonight the moon shines through the blinds, too bright to camouflage how tired he is. His eyes are pinched the way they were when he first came home from his tour in Iraq after my mom left, and it was just him and me. He’s worried, I guess, wondering what the hell to do with me. Raising a daughter alone isn’t the life he wanted.

  “Sometimes I forget you’re not one of my Marines.”

  “I’m not that strong, Daddy,” I whisper.

  One side of his mouth concedes a smile. “It’s been a long time since you called me that.”

  Too long.

  “You okay now?” he asks, rising.

  I don’t want to, but I let go. “Yeah. Sorry I woke you.”

  He pauses in my doorway. “I’m not. I love you, kid. Get some sleep.”

  My door closes before I can recover enough to tell him I love him, too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My alarm isn’t set, but I wake early enough to make it to Spring Lake by 0830.

  I avoided seeing my father by sneaking out the front door while he poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Some Sundays I hang out at the hospital, so I’m guessing he’ll think that’s where I am. In reality, I’m sitting in my Jeep in front of the Blue Dawn Café, waiting for my mother to show and wondering what the hell I’m doing here.

  The Blue Dawn Café is set back from the tree-lined sidewalk. The huge square windows frame the picturesque view of the inside with its vinyl booths and the regulars lined up on stools at the bar. It’s a freaking Norman Rockwell painting.

  Why Spring Lake? I think. Uncle Eddy is Army. Were they stationed at Fort Bragg—a half hour from Sweethaven—all this time? Or did they move back to North Carolina recently? And why now?

  The questions whirl through my mind, but I don’t have any answers. She does, though. If I find the courage to walk into the diner, I can find out what I want to know. But will I like what I hear? I’ve learned that things can always suck worse than they did five minutes ago. Do I really want to rock this boat, with its plugged holes and missing oars?

  I haven’t made any decisions, but it’s too late. She’s arrived. The café must have a back entrance, because one minute she’s not there and the next she’s sliding into a booth in the front window.

  My mother.

  At the hospital, maybe thirty seconds passed from the moment I saw her to when she’d walked out the door. Now, I take my time to absorb the changes. She hasn’t aged as much as I’d thought. Perhaps whatever was wrong with Uncle Eddy made her look strained that night.

  She is beautiful, but not sultry like I remembered. I can’t put my finger on what’s different. The longer black hair and the toned-down makeup, obviously, but something more. Something in her attitude. She is a mystery.

  I want to know. Everything.

  * * *

  Six years ago, my mother had promised we would take a trip. A train trip to New York City. Or a car ride to Wilmington. I didn’t care where we went. I loved that it would be just her and me.

  Of course, after I found my mother in bed with Uncle Eddy, she stopped mentioning the vacation, and our getaway dissolved into mist. I knew the call I’d made to my father had sealed the deal. Uncle Eddy had disappeared from our house, and my father had yet to return home from the Middle East. My mother had scarcely noticed me in days, and I’d spent more time at Carey’s than at home. At least at his house, Carey tried to cheer me up. He even went so far as to convince Blake to let me pick the movie—Mulan—which they both hated and I loved. We did not agree on what constituted a “chick flick.”

  One night, I’d heard my parents arguing by phone, the words indistinguishable except for my mother screaming “Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your fucking Marines, Cole!” and “I married you, not the damned Marines.” The last she punctuated with a loud, repeated slamming noise.

  The next morning at breakfast, I alternated between worried glances at our broken phone, which lay like shrapnel on our kitchen table, and her. Distracted, she exhaled through pursed red lips and stared into the curlicue of smoke drifting above her head.

  I shoved my Cookie Crisp cereal in circles around my bowl, dunking them in the milk and watching them bob back to the surface. Unsinkable cookies. Funny how the chocolate chips always looked bigger on the box than in real life.

  “Stop playing with your food, Soph,” my mother said.

  I looked up quickly to find her smashing a cigarette into the fancy white candy dish she used as an ashtray.

  Her blue eyes met mine, suddenly fierce. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  “Like to the movies?”

  She shook her head. “Not the movies. Listen, we can do anything. Where would you want to go right now if you could go anywhere?”

  The expectant look on her face weighed on me. She wanted me to pick somewhere exciting. If I said what I wanted—to spend time with her—it wouldn’t be the right answer. I shrugged and drank the last of the milk in my bowl.

  “You’re too much like your father.” She sighed and rose to her feet, clearing away my cereal and her ashtray. “You don’t always have to be so perfect, Sophie. Be spontaneous.”

  I grasped enough of that to know I’d disappointed her. “The beach,” I blurted out.

  “The beach?” she asked as if the idea intrigued her. “I like it,” she added decisively, dropping our dishes in the sink with a clatter. “Go pack an overnight bag.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. We both rushed through the house, laughing and calling to each other from our rooms. She made it into a race, giving me ten minutes to gather my things and get into our car. I made it in nine and a half.

  We didn’t stray far from home.

  The four hours to Nag’s Head on the Outer Banks reassured me like my call to my father hadn’t. We played games—“Find an object that starts with each letter of the alphabet” and “I Spy”—and sang along to the radio. When we arrived, my mom splurged on one of those motels that sat right on the beach and had a pool.

  A few moments of those two days pop out like Polaroids taped to my heart: Savoring saltwater taffy in waxy rainbow shades as we sat in the sand watching the sun color the water. Doing a flip into the pool in my red polka-dot one-piece with the bow on the
front while mom clapped from under the shade of a lemon-yellow umbrella. Dancing in our hotel room with the radio turned up loud enough to feel my heart knocking in my chest, and the flash of my mother’s skirt as she whipped me around. And at the end of the day, curling up at her feet as her fingers tickled my scalp and she unknotted a day’s worth of tangles from my waist-length hair.

  For two days she focused every bit of her attention on me. She listened to me chatter on about Carey and Blake. I told her everything I liked and everything I disliked and everything that popped into my head. Unfiltered. Uncensored. Unaware.

  And then we returned home to find Uncle Eddy on our doorstep. I snubbed him as only an eleven-year-old can, running past him and stomping into the house. My mother sent me to my room, and their voices rumbled from the kitchen. They did not sound angry, like my parents usually did. They did not argue or shout. No—they spoke in hushed tones, excited whispers. Sharing secrets.

  I sat on the floor with my ear to the door, tearing at the skin around my fingernails, but I couldn’t make out their words. It didn’t matter, though. The next day the two of them picked me up from Carey’s house in Uncle Eddy’s old Buick. I sat in the backseat with my arms crossed, glaring out the window. I didn’t want my mother near him. He’d ruined everything.

  Instead of driving to our house, we pulled up at my grandmother’s. My father’s mother, her steel-gray hair coiled into uniform rows of perfect barrel curls, shook her head at my mother. Uncle Eddy used to say that Grandma had sharpened her tongue on my grandfather for so many years, it could flay the skin off a man from one hundred yards away. While my mother and I climbed out of the car, my grandmother approached Uncle Eddy who busied himself pulling a suitcase—my pink suitcase—out of the trunk.

  “You’ve betrayed your brother and this family,” she told him, taking the suitcase. “You’re not welcome here.”

  Uncle Eddy’s face tightened, like each word had slapped him. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mom.”