Lies She Told

by Cate Holahan

  He pushes back from the table and reaches for the briefcase.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not having this conversation.”

  “It’s not even a conversation! I was telling you about my appointment. It’s been a month, Dave. Our life can’t remain on hold indefinitely while we—”

  “On hold?” He slaps the table and stands. Ceramic rattles against the glass surface. I wince as a knife clatters to the floor. “You think life has been on hold? In addition to my own caseload, I have all of Nick’s work falling on top of me. It’s impossible to get a continuance for everything. And the police are doing nothing to find him! I don’t know whether he had a mental breakdown and is hiding out somewhere or if he was the victim of a hate crime—”

  I pat the air, trying to calm him and myself. Yelling will push him out the door. “Why would Nick be the victim of a hate crime?”

  David throws up his hands. “Why? How can you ask that?”

  “Well, he’s a white male. I don’t see—”

  He gestures to the side of the room, appealing to an invisible jury. “We won a ten-million-dollar suit on behalf of a transgender teen that held public institutions accountable for allowing toxic environments for LGBT people. Our names were in the paper. The firm has been inundated with hate mail ever since. At least two people have threatened to kill us if their daughters ever have to use a bathroom with a transitioning girl. It’s a two-second web search to find our pictures. For all we know, someone stalked Nick to his apartment and is holding him hostage. But the police are doing nothing!”

  I misjudged his mood. Grief stage three is not the time to bring up infertility issues. “Please sit. Let’s just have dinner.” I reach out toward him. “I’m not your enemy here.”

  His look casts doubt on my statement. Still, he collects the knife from the floor and settles back into the seat. He palms his fork and stabs his pasta until each prong is overloaded with noodles.

  “I know you’re under a lot of pressure. Maybe we should get away for the weekend. The house is free.”

  David’s nose flares at the affected way I refer to the Hamptons place. The house is nothing more than my childhood home, a cedar-shingled two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath in Montauk, on the water. It is worth a significant chunk of change, however. Whatever I think about my father, I must concede that the man knew real estate.

  “Why didn’t you get a renter?” He points at me with his loaded fork. “August is prime time.”

  “I got that insane offer from the trader who only wanted mid-June to the first week of August. What he paid alone will cover taxes and upkeep for the entire year, so we didn’t need another guest.” I proffer a smile. “I thought we might enjoy it.”

  “You should have put it on one of the short-term B and B sites.”

  David’s frown saps whatever was left of my appetite. Though his salary has always covered our expenses with plenty to spare, things have been tighter since my books stopped making any significant financial contribution. The fertility treatments haven’t helped our bottom line, either.

  “Well, I didn’t so . . .”

  David jams the food into his mouth. “I can’t commit to a vacation right now.”

  Talking with his mouth full is an act David only performs for present company. I should probably take his lack of basic social skills around me as evidence of a solid marriage. He’s so secure that there’s no need for basic courtesies. Still, I long for the days when he felt I was worthy of a conversation that didn’t involve the view of chewed particles.

  “You go.” A fleck of basil lodges between his teeth. “The quiet will help your writing, and you can hang out with Christine.”

  A familiar tension twists in my temples. As much as I’d love to see my best friend, the whole point of staying at the house is for David and me to be together, away from the distraction of his job or Nick’s disappearance. Also, I hate sleeping in my childhood home by myself. It makes me inexplicably anxious. Perhaps something about the crash of the sea outside, like a persistent knock on the door by someone intent on coming in. Or maybe the way the wind whistles through the rafters at night. All I know is, when I’m there alone, the house feels angry. The presence of other people purges the bad energy.

  “I don’t need quiet to write. I want you there.”

  David’s eyes roll. Though he knows I dislike staying solo at the beach house, he thinks I’m insane for it. Montauk, as he so often insists, is one of the safest places on the planet.

  “I mean if you’re really concerned that you have a bull’s-eye on your back because of that case, don’t you think it would be good to get out of the city?” I walk behind his chair. He bristles as my palms land on his shoulders. I massage his neck for a beat before hugging him from behind. Once, he’d lean into me as I did this. But something has shattered between us, something invisible that I sense deep within me, the way a broken bone detects coming rain.

  “Come on, David. We need this. Your trial will start next month, and I’m leaving for the MWO conference Sunday. I won’t see you. We won’t get to try . . .”

  He exhales, a long, drawn-out sigh, something from anger-management therapy or yoga classes. “I have Nick’s cases.”

  Again, the conversation has returned to Nick. The missing man sits in the center of a corn maze, and I keep getting turned around trying to find the exit. Nick. Nick. Nick.

  When Nick and David met in law school, it was as though my fiancé had found a long-lost twin. Here was a man who could relate to his fundamentalist upbringing and his conflicting desire to challenge the rules he saw as unfair. Someone who understood—unlike his single mom–raised, New York–bred progressive wife—how it felt to be a Southerner surrounded by Northeasterners. As long as what happened to Nick remains a mystery, David will think of nothing else. The month that’s passed hasn’t dulled the pain of his friend’s disappearance. A year could go by and David would probably still be focused on him, holding out hope that the man he considered a brother might turn out to be alive and well.

  I drop my chin onto David’s shoulder. “Hey, the police academy in Flushing is on the way to Montauk. I could talk to my contacts from that writers’ police workshop. This one cop, Sergeant Mark Perez, was a twenty-year veteran. He might know something about violent crime in Nick’s neighborhood, or someone who can tell us something.”

  David reaches up and pats my cheek. “Thank you.” He exhales, an audible surrender. “Maybe I will try to get away for a couple days. I could come out Friday and Saturday, get back to work on Sunday.”

  I kiss his neck and thank him. Two days. Intercourse, maybe twice a day. Between two hundred million and five hundred million sperm per ejaculation. Seven or so ripe eggs in my ovaries ready for fertilization. All I need is one to stick to my uterine wall. The odds seem in my favor.

  David seems to sense where my mind is. He sighs again and tells me how tired he is from “everything.”

  I decide not to push my luck. “I better get back to my book.”

  I scrape my dinner into the garbage and then put the plate in the dishwasher. Afterward, I grab David’s jacket with a promise to toss it with the rest of the dry cleaning, like I always do. It smells of his sweat and cologne, a mossy, musky mix that I recognize as his signature.

  My open laptop waits for me on the bedroom desk. I sit on the rolling chair and stare, again, at the near-blank page. What is Beth’s main problem this chapter? What does she want? Her husband to renounce the other woman, beg her forgiveness, and tearfully renew his pledge to be faithful, for starters. But that’s not happening this chapter. Maybe it won’t happen at all. I swirl my finger atop the trackpad. What does Trevor want? A troubled ingenue falling under the spell of her Jungian therapist as he interprets her dreams?

  Before my better self can block the image, I see my editor lording over a leather couch. The light from a reading lamp reflects off the sweat beads on his bare brown chest. The image lingers like a hot
flash. I force it back into the trash bin of my memories and rejected fantasies, blinking until I regain focus on the glowing screen in front of me. I press the keys.

  Chapter 2

  I lie atop the sheets, covered in darkness. Waiting. Dreading. Victoria sleeps in the crib crammed between the wall and our queen bed, breath whistling from her tiny nose. A breeze slips through the cracked window. It blurs the central air’s hum with the sounds of the river and music—loud booty-shaking baby-waking music. Party boats. Each time one rounds the island, choppy calypso invades the room, destroying the tense quiet. Interrupting my focus.

  The clock sits on the nightstand, casting a green glow into the space like a searchlight: 10:00 PM. When I was little, a public service announcement would sound at this same hour, moments after my dad settled down with his bottle of Bushmills to gripe at the evening news. It’s 10:00 PM. Do you know where your children are? I’d be hiding beneath the blanket in my room. My mother would be upstairs in her bed, probably doing the same thing. The man of the house was to be avoided when drunk. Avoided period.

  It’s 10:00 PM. Do you know where your husband is?

  The click of the deadbolt answers. A drawn-out groan announces the door opening. The pertinent question is no longer where is my husband, but where has he been. I know what he’ll say if I ask: the office. He’s already left me a voice mail attesting to it. Hey, hon, I’ll be home late. Trying to make headway on an upcoming case so I don’t have to work on the weekend. No need to wait up. You need your rest.

  Work is the safe excuse. Murder trials can require a hundred-hour workweek. There’s no homicide case on Jake’s docket, to my knowledge, but how would I know one is not in the offing? And he is working on that case of the wealthy socialite who injured a bunch of people backing her car out of a restaurant. Why wouldn’t I believe it’s taking up more time? More important, why would I ever question his stated whereabouts? Before maternity leave, I accepted such excuses without a murmur. Most of the time, I was the one giving them.

  I peel myself off the bed. My full-coverage cotton panties, the mom version of tighty-whities, reflect the moonlight from the window. The same glow lands on my bare breasts. Typically, my toplessness would be an invitation for a quiet quickie. Tonight, it’s due to a lack of clean nursing bras. I bet that bitch didn’t wear a bra under her dress.

  I hold myself extra straight as I creep from the room and shut the door behind me. Five weeks postpartum and my belly is almost back to normal, though I must tense to keep my lower abdominals from rounding. Whatever excuse Jake has made for his behavior, he can’t point to his wife’s weight gain.

  He hangs his suit jacket in the foyer closet, the door obscuring my presence in the living area. Somehow, he doesn’t feel me feet from him. Perhaps his mind is miles away—with her. The door shuts as if in slow motion. I trace the curve of his buttocks in the light-gray suit pants, the side of his leg. I examine his arm, sleeve rolled up to his muscular bicep, his thick neck rising to his barely there beard and balding head, shaved tight so that the hair loss on the crown appears to be a choice rather than a consequence of nearing forty.

  He sees me as he shuts the door and startles, stepping back toward the exit as though the woman before him is an intruder. “Beth!” He smiles, pretending he’s not disappointed by my presence. Only a corner of his thin top lip ticks up. His eyes fail to crinkle at the corners. Some things you can’t fake. “I didn’t realize you were up. Did you get my message?”

  A demilune console table is pressed against the wall to my left. Without looking, I can see the two photos atop it in their heavy pewter frames. The first is of Jake and me on our wedding day. I’m hugging him while he laughs. I’d interpreted his mirth as happiness. Now I see it as mockery. He knew that I had no idea what I was getting into.

  I grab the frame and hurl it at him, a pitcher trying to bean a batter crowding the base. My aim is sure, but he’s too fast. He yanks his body out of the way, head diving from the projectile, shoulders following suit. The frame grazes his dangling forearm before slamming into the front door. Glass shatters. Not in a spray, but in two neat shivs.

  “What are you doing?” he sputters. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Oh, what’s wrong with me?” I grab for the other photo.

  The image stops me. A few-hours-old Victoria sleeps on my half-covered breast, wearing the pink-and-blue-striped hat that St. Luke’s slaps on all newborns. I am gazing at my photographer husband, a closed-lipped smile on my face that seems to shout, We did it. Here she is. Our victory.

  My distraction is to Jake’s advantage. Before I realize what is happening, his hands are around my wrists. He pulls me toward him as I struggle to wrest free while hissing insults.

  “Baby, stop it. Stop.” He doesn’t yell. Either he’s guessed that Victoria is asleep in the neighboring room from my whispered epithets or he’s remembered that she goes down around ten. He leads me to the couch, fingers still locked around my wrists like handcuffs. When he sits, he pulls me onto the cushion with him. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  My response burns, bile in my throat. I am feverish with the effort of not shouting. “Where were you, really?” The words slam against gritted teeth. “Where were you while I’ve been here caring for our baby?”

  He blinks. For a moment, I swear the pink drains from his face. The blood quickly returns, flushing his neck. “At work,” he speaks slowly, examining my face. “As I told you in my message.”

  The bald-faced lie should inflame my rage. But he’s looking at me with those intense eyes, blazing as a summer sky. They open so wide it seems his soul could slip out. He has honest eyes. I’d thought so the moment we met in that courtroom. I remember the way he looked at me as I loitered beside the prosecutor’s desk. Him, a handsome young lawyer on his first murder trial. Me, a new recruit to the paper’s law-and-order desk, struggling to project enough confidence to believably ask him hard questions. His brow had wrinkled at the sight of the press pass hanging from my neck like tacky statement jewelry. Then he’d seen my face, and those baby blues had sparkled like December birthstones. He’d looked at me and grinned, as though he’d been waiting his whole life for me to show up beside him in some airless courtroom. Now that I’d arrived, we would escape and be happy.

  And I’m bawling. Tears cascade down my face. Convulsions shake my body and twist my mouth into grotesque shapes. Fluid fills my nose. I cry so hard I start coughing. I’m drowning.

  He holds me to his side, cooing like a mourning dove. “What is it? You can tell me.” The concern in his tone sounds so real. Yet how could it be? How could he care at all about me and lie to my face?

  I gasp, unable to speak without screaming. His arms wrap around my back. When I shudder, he pulls me into him and rubs his hands over my spine, as though I’ve caught a chill that he can soothe with body heat and friction. My nose presses against his white button-down. I inhale in short bursts, trying to compose myself. At the same time, I sniff his clothes. What does she smell like? Jasmine? Linen? Sex?

  The green scent of his deodorant soap and the mossy perfume of his aftershave assail my nostrils. He’s applied this recently. Liberally. I push back and stare at the bulge bobbing in his neck. No trace of a sheen at his collar, despite the hot day. If he stunk of this woman, I could convince myself that they’d hung out, maybe necked a bit in the car, at worst had a one-night fling that he’d fled in a shameful daze. But he’s made an effort to clean up. An experienced cheater move. How long has this been going on?

  He brushes my long bangs off my forehead, tucking the limp hair behind my ear. Part of me wants nothing more than to close my eyes and erase the memory of hours earlier. Him, me, and baby makes three. This is all I want. I hate myself that this is all I want.

  “Is it Vicky?”

  The mention of our daughter encourages me to get it together. I can’t have a breakdown. I have a baby to care for. I inhale and exhale. Breathe. I need to breathe.

  “I
s it being cooped up all day in the house without anyone to talk to? You feel lonely.” He rubs my back as though I’ve been ill. He’s the sick one. How can he comfort me after trying to destroy me with his selfishness? He strokes my hair. “You know, a lot of women go through this after birth. Moodiness. Depression. Anger. You were on those drugs before we conceived. Everything is probably out of whack.”

  His audacity is a blast of hot air, evaporating my distress. He thinks he’s so slick that I can’t have any upsetting suspicions. I’m irrationally angry because he came home late. It’s the crazy hormones. He continues watching me, expression sincere as a begging puppy. I have an urge to poke my fingers through his sockets and scratch out his eyes. It would be a public service—keep them from tricking anyone else.

  “You should talk to someone. We have free sessions with a psychiatrist through the health insurance. I can give you numbers.”

  Without my tears, I feel brittle and empty. All I can do is gawp and blink. Why do I love this man?

  “What do you think?”

  Do I even know him?

  “You want the number?”

  I don’t need a shrink; I need not to be married to a lying scumbag. The insult freezes on my tongue. Any argument will end with me shouting and him storming out. He’ll call me nuts, claim he never left the office. I’m delusional, he’ll say. I imagined it. New York City has eight million people. He’s sure to have a doppelgänger somewhere.

  “Should I make an appointment?”

  I should have confronted him at the restaurant. Better to have embarrassed myself than to have my accusations dismissed as postpartum hallucinations.

  “I don’t know.” My voice creaks like a broken hinge.

  “Tomorrow.” Again, he brushes my hair behind my ear. Fingers rub my head. He’s petting me. “I’ll book tomorrow.” He yawns, a jaw-dropping expression that he covers with his hand. “I have to get to bed. Early morning.”