Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  Slowly I unclenched my fists.

  Absence seizures, which I got from time to time, weren’t too scary. They weren’t the same as what had happened in the music room back in eighth grade. Absences—“staring spells,” my parents called them when I was little—were glitches in my brain patterns. I thought of them as blanking out, and they never lasted for more than thirty seconds or a minute.

  But after an absence, I usually felt numb and flattened out. Other times, I felt a fresh spring of clarity: that’s how I felt now.

  I’d figure out a fake ID. Somehow.

  The important thing was that tomorrow night, I was getting out of this house. The Troc would be something totally new, exciting, out of bounds, maybe even dangerous. Whatever happened, however it happened, was beside the point. The point was the experience. The point was change.

  eleven

  I sat on the front stoop, guarding against Claire meeting any member of my family: Dad puttering around the toolshed in his terrible acid-wash jeans, Peter and Owen grinding their skateboards up and down the driveway.

  She was almost an hour late. “Sorry. First the game, then I was at the doctor’s. His office is right in Devon.”

  “Are you sick?” I swung my straw bag into the back of her VW. It was actually Mom’s beach bag, and only slightly better than the teal-and-purple duffel that I’d rejected as too babyish.

  “My shrink. Didn’t you tell me you see one, too?”

  “No!” I stiffened. Why did she say that? Why was she looking at me like that? How could she know about my Tuesdays with Dr. Neumann, with her orangish lipstick and her browning spider plants and her questions and her Rx pad?

  Claire shrugged. “My mom makes me go. But it’s fine. I use most of the time to talk about my crazy aunt. I’m not ashamed to see a shrink,” she added. “Mine is mellow and helpful. It’s not like I’ve got all the answers.”

  I made a noise of agreement. Today something about Claire’s effortless cool stabbed at me harder. This week, I’d bought a colored mousse foam-in at the drugstore, which had done nothing to my hair but stained my nail beds a dark, radioactive copper. Claire’s look couldn’t be found at a drugstore. You couldn’t buy her long, dark denim legs or her perfectly threadbare T-shirt. There was no price tag on her knotty cheekbones or the casual wisps of hair that escaped her uptwist.

  “You have a tattoo?” I saw it on her forearm through her cotton shirtsleeve, about an inch long, with a design like a star but narrower. I’d seen tattoos only on muscled-up guys who served beer or pumped gas. “What is it?”

  “Ace of Swords. Part of a tarot reading I got last birthday.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Her lips pressed together. “It means I was drunk.”

  “Ha.”

  Soon we were driving down tree-lined Merion Square Road. The B side of REM’s Document was on, more boppy than Claire’s usual taste. She smirked as I gave her the key death scenes of Pumpkinhead, and then she recapped highlights of the day’s hockey game.

  “Your friend Gage is like an ancient Highlander. When she pulls off her goalie mask to bully the ref, she is the scariest person on the field.”

  “She’s been like that since we were kids!” Claire had Gage exactly right, and I cracked up to imagine her as a raging Scotswoman yanking off her mask in fury at some tough call.

  Eventually Claire slowed, and we turned through the iron gates that protected her aunt’s estate.

  “Whoa.” I was used to the money overspill of Argyll, but I didn’t know any kids who lived in a place like this. “These trees must be hundreds of years old.” I stared. “And the land alone—it’s like a college campus.”

  “Or a mental institute.”

  “And you have peacocks!”

  “Yeah . . . somehow peacocks make it worse.”

  Really? How? The half dozen peacocks that strolled the lawn of Lilac House were as dazzling as Mardi Gras. Their dipping tails were sapphire plumes that brushed the autumn lawn as they paraded slowly past us.

  “It doesn’t even matter where you end up,” I said, “with a driveway like this. It could be a mud hut at the top, and the whole thing would still be amazing.”

  “I’ll remind you that you told me that, once you see what Aunt Jane’s done with the place.”

  Of course there was no hut, but a Tudor-style mansion at the end of the drive. It was immense and rich with Gothic flourishes—leaded-glass windows, multiple chimneys, stone gargoyles spouting from a high turret. It wasn’t until we were out of the car and walking up to the front door that I began to notice how the pebbled walkway was choked with weeds, and that the silver linden trees were gnarled, their roots untended and their branches entangled with bittersweet.

  “It kind of looks like a castle cast under a spell, to keep the world away.” I was probably idealizing it, but I wasn’t lying, either.

  “Since my uncle died, Aunt Jane is all about the cats.” Claire had her head up. “Mr. Mack—her gardener—can’t come near the house. I mean, lord forbid he startles them with his leaf blower or his mower. He keeps his distance—thirty feet. That’s the rule.”

  We stopped at the large, peaked front door. Claire fished a key from her bag. “Jump in. If any of these cats escape outside, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Got it.”

  She turned the key, and no sooner were we scooting sideways into the house than cats charged us from all directions. I gasped. I’d never, ever seen cats like these. Huge and sleek and brightly marked, with long necks and large ears, they were like a pack of tigers, all making a run for freedom as Claire slammed us in.

  I wanted to hold my nose. The front hall reeked.

  “Are these cats . . . all from one family?”

  “I have no idea.” A few cats were pushing past my calves to claw at the oak door—already chopped and sliced with vertical marks, some so deep they looked like the work of an axe.

  “Are they like a mix of cat and—I don’t know—lynx or something?”

  “No, just some creepy rare breed my aunt loves. And they’re allowed to piss and shit everywhere, as you can tell.”

  The biting smell of cat pee was so intense my eyes smarted. I blinked and stared around. The hall was mostly empty. I saw a marble-topped table heaped with mail, a litter box that looked like it might have once been a lasagna pan, and a couple of carpet-covered scratching posts worn bald. The cat stuff contrasted with the beauty of the hall itself. There were paneled walls and a crystal chandelier that was squared above the center staircase, as well as beautiful wooden scrollwork of carved flowers, trailing vines, and fruit.

  I looked up the stairs. I could imagine a ghost bride on the landing. “Is anyone home?”

  “Aunt Jane is in her bedroom watching old movies. Mom works weekends at Galway Dress—she’ll be back later. I’d offer you food, but I’m never in the kitchen.”

  “No problem.” I was following her down the long, dark hallway. “A suit of armor? Stone floors? It’s like King Arthur lives here.”

  “Yeah, or Scooby-Doo.”

  “Ha.” Now I noticed all the damage. The carpet runners were discolored with cat pee, and floor moldings had been clawed to trauma.

  At the end of the hall, two mean-eyed felines nestled on a tattered chaise lounge. Its brocade upholstery was shredded. Claire opened the last door into a cold draft and a dark, vertical library, another room with the soul of the Renaissance. A faded hanging tapestry cloaked one wall, while the opposite was dominated by a huge bay window heaped with cushions and quilts. A stone fireplace with a mantel display of German beer steins banked the far end of the room.

  The room’s high-backed sofas and easy chairs were upholstered in blue-and-mustard-striped fabric—silk, I guessed. It looked like Claire must have pulled them close together to make the space cozier. Paris Match magazines, McDonald
’s soda cups, and Argyll textbooks were stacked on the tables, while Claire’s field hockey equipment was piled in a corner.

  “This is your room? This library?” Bookshelves had been cleared for stacks of Claire’s clothing, and she was using the desk as a personal dressing table, her vanity mirror set up alongside her makeup bag and hair dryer.

  “I had to. The cat smell is worse upstairs. But this room is No Cats Allowed.”

  “You sleep in the window?” I shivered involuntarily.

  “Yeah. It’s comfortable. Sorry about the cold, but I swear I can smell the cats everywhere. So I’ve always got the air conditioner going.” Claire bit at her thumbnail. She looked so alone that if she’d been closer to me—a cousin, maybe—I might have even hugged her.

  “I’m really sorry, but I don’t have a fake ID,” I blurted instead.

  “Well, that’s that.” Claire blinked, but her face offered no path on what she was thinking.

  “So you can drive me back home.”

  “Okay, if you want.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was only the vision of Claire ejecting me from her car into one more Saturday night of watching MTV and drawing my hand that screwed up my courage. I took a breath. “There’s also that party at Liz DeBatista’s?”

  “Sure, yeah.” She shrugged. “We’ll just go to Liz’s.”

  “Well, great. That’ll be fun.” I tried to sound relaxed. I shivered again, I couldn’t help it.

  “Too cold, I know.” Claire made a face. “But we’ve got an indoor pool, and in there it doesn’t smell—not like cat pee anyway. It’s warm. We could eat dinner there before we get ready to go. I’ll do your makeup. We’ll leave around nine. Okay?”

  My smile was so big I could have been in the chorus of a middle school musical again—Oliver! or The Jungle Book—as Mr. Hock was telling me that I had to “telegraph joy to the back of the house.”

  Only this time, I wasn’t telegraphing. This time was real life.

  twelve

  In the kitchen were more clawing posts, plus metal bowls lined up in rows on the floor, like for a cat orphanage. Litter boxes were parked in the corners. If the front hall was all pee smell, the kitchen stank with the liverish odor of cat food.

  Slit-eyed cats, draped on chairs and slung out in windowsills, stared at us from all sides like bored predators. “I guess this is their main hangout zone, huh?”

  “The whole house is their hangout zone. It’s finding the people-only zones that’s the challenge.”

  Claire’s quiet embarrassment embarrassed me. Her face was an aloof mask as she opened and shut random cupboards. I could tell by her general confusion about where things were stored that she didn’t spend any time here, but I made myself not do my usual eager-beaver help thing.

  “Don’t sit,” she snapped when I tried to upend a cat from a high stool. “We’ll be out of here in three minutes.”

  It was a relief to us both when she found the can opener that wrenched the lids from two cans of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli. The smell of microwave tomato sauce plus cat food made me queasy, but it seemed important to act like I wasn’t grossed out, and at last, dinners ladled, we carried spoons and bowls through the kitchen’s swinging door and down a pantry hall, through a dutch door that led to a sun-washed solarium of marble statues and potted ferns.

  “Oh, wow—it looks like a hotel.” I was whispering, awed, even though we were alone. “With a skylight and everything.”

  “This house is kind of like playing rock-paper-scissors,” said Claire. “Air conditioner covers the smell of cat ass. Chlorine cuts the smell of cat ass. With most other rooms, unfortunately, cat ass is the rock that crushes everything.”

  “I don’t mind the smell of chlorine.” Especially after the kitchen. I was trying to fix things with words, but nothing about Lilac House was normal. Parts of it were sad and decrepit, but anyone could see that this pool was built with no expenses spared. The tiles winked like black and silver diamonds, an Egyptian-style mural unfolded along every wall, and the lounge chairs were upholstered in a creamy fabric untouched by the drag of cat claws. A long bank of windows gave a sweeping view of the strutting peacocks and the woods beyond.

  One of the lounges had been pulled up against the windows, and here Claire plunked herself down, pasta bowl in her lap. I dragged up another lounge next to hers. The space around us was littered with blue-glass bottles of Clearly Canadian, along with crumpled bags of Cool Ranch Doritos and Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies.

  “I do my homework here,” Claire explained. “It’s warm from the sun and it doesn’t depress me as much as the rest of the house. I’ll be bummed when it’s winter.”

  Today had been sunny and heat lingered in the stone floor. “I feel like a first-class passenger on a cruise ship.” I stretched out and dipped my spoon for a bite of ravioli.

  “You sure can spin it.”

  “What’s the expression, when life gives you cat pee, make lemonade?”

  “Eww!” At least that got Claire laughing, and the ravioli was surprisingly delicious, living up to my nostalgic grade-school memories.

  We finished eating in silence and when I was done, I set my bowl on the floor and walked over to the pool’s edge, clenched my toes around the coping, and braced myself on one foot as I dunked for temperature with the other. The water reflected dark from the tiles, but you could see all the way to the bottom. “Do you ever swim in it?”

  “I tried once, but it felt slimy. Aunt Jane says it gets cleaned and refilled every summer, but I don’t trust a word out of her mouth.”

  “Do you know how far—oh!”

  It had sunk to the deepest part, near the drain. You could hardly tell what it was. Hairs lifted on my arms as a sour taste of ravioli notched up in the back of my throat.

  “What?” Claire jumped up and ran over. When I glanced at her, she seemed spellbound by the vision of the matted, lifeless body.

  “Um, okay. Who deals with that?” I had my hand at my heart, as if I could slow down its beating. “Us? Your mom?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Your aunt Jane?”

  “Now even this room is ruined. There’s nowhere to go that’s clean. Everything’s so . . . tainted. And she thinks I’m the problem.”

  “I’m sorry, Claire.” I paused. “And also, practically speaking, someone needs to remove the body.”

  “I know, I know.” Her voice dropped. “Listen, I’m not telling Aunt Jane just yet, or she’ll unravel, and—I can’t deal with her tonight.”

  Against a wall, I saw a couple of aluminum poles, the nets and brushes of pool cleaning equipment. “So should we fish it out?”

  “No, no. I’ll tell Mr. Mack when I see him.”

  “I think I need to throw up.”

  “The bathroom’s through that door.”

  I skittered away. I didn’t need to vomit, exactly, but I could feel something coming on. Inside, I locked the door and sat on the closed toilet, rocking forward.

  Someone was speaking.

  A tap. “You okay?” Claire repeated.

  Time had passed. I’d had a lapse—where was I? I exhaled, remembering. I hadn’t worn my watch, I didn’t know if I’d been in here for one minute or three or six.

  “Yeah.” When I felt stronger, I stood. My reflection looked unfocused and sleepy. I ran some faucet water, flicked it in my face, stepped out.

  Claire peered at me as if she were trying to hear the thoughts inside my head. I felt myself flush—what if I’d had a worse seizure right here, in her house? Had anyone at school told her anything?

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Perfect!”

  “I feel bad, inviting anyone over. It’s so weird and disgusting here.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I mean, these cats, the living ones—an
d now the dead one.”

  “Little brothers are grosser, I promise.”

  “Let’s get ready. I’ll do your makeup.”

  I swallowed. “Sure.”

  “Unless you want to go home.”

  “No,” I said. “No way.”

  Back in her room, Claire put on some weird French music like what she’d played last week in the art room. None of us had much liked it, but nobody dared to tell her that, since right from day one, she’d seemed to have elected herself in charge of art room tunes. She changed into a black T-shirt and jeans, also black but tighter than her day jeans.

  After she’d finished with herself, Claire sat me at her desk-dressing table and gave me an identical makeover—smoky charcoal makeup and mascara. She vetoed my lightly shoulder-padded paisley blouse in favor of her own ribbed white tank top, the black cardigan she’d given me, and a pair of her biker boots one size too big but with a chunky heel I liked.

  The total effect made me feel like I was in costume, a punk-rock paper doll anchored to an extremely heavy stand, but exhilarated by her overhaul.

  “It’s Jay’s birthday today,” said Claire as we shot quickly out the front door into the crisp October evening. “I really wanted someone around with me tonight. Last year, he and I were hanging out—in a good way, I guess. At least, I thought it was good.” She dipped her head to rummage for her car keys. “I despise that I remember those kinds of dates.” Her voice was thick.

  “Right,” I said. “I totally get it.” I got so little of it. But what I did know: Claire had picked me. Claire thought I was the right one to hang out with her tonight—even as she was missing her old love, the mysterious Jay. The guy had unwound her so completely, and was still so hard for her to talk about. Besides, Claire would be right by my side if I saw Matt tonight—and she was as cool as any Nectarine.

  In the car, she sniffed the air. “I’m starting to think I can smell cats all the time.”

  “Party crushes cats,” I announced.