Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  Instead I looked closer, even though I felt like a Peeping Tom. The oiled brushstrokes were so aggressive, challenging me to stare up and down the shape of her, lounging boneless on a bed. Her flesh was bright: peach, banana, and mustard flesh tones. You could almost feel the warmth of her skin in contrast to the cool, pearl-white rumpled bedsheets.

  The placard beneath the painting confirmed it.

  Phillip Custis-Brown

  Jeanie, 1985

  Oil on canvas

  73.7 cm × 92.1 cm (29 in × 36¼ in)

  Mrs. Custis-Brown’s name was Jean. I shivered. It was just so weird, that explosion of teacher pubic hair, those raisin-dark teacher nipples. I imagined Mr. Custis-Brown, thumb crooked to get the jut of “Jeanie’s” hipbone and the curve of her inner thigh just right. I felt kidnapped, like the Custis-Browns had secretly grabbed me by the hands and pushed me into a forbidden, velvety room of scarf-draped lamps and red wine and nakedness.

  Mrs. Custis-Brown had looked embarrassed that day, when Claire played the Gainsbourg, but she’d only been pretending to be a prude at her workplace, where we girls saw her as the perfect match to a husband who was like the human version of Peter Rabbit.

  But the joke was on us, because Jeanie Custis-Brown wasn’t embarrassed by anything. It was like she was laughing at me, and visions of her naked body stayed smeared across my closed eyes as I rode home on the train.

  I was used to girls with secrets—like Leslie or Kreo. Even I had a secret. But not every secret made you its victim. Some secrets were bold. Some secrets, like Mrs. Custis-Brown’s, were your double life, where you were defiant and wild.

  Maybe that’s where I’d been wrong all along about Claire?

  Maybe the real Claire always had been right in front of me, and I’d gotten her totally inside out and backward. What if Jay was the victim here? As in, Claire had found the one guy who’d been ridiculously easy to manipulate, and she’d gone after him hard—baked him lemon squares, knitted him a cute woolly hat, created mixtapes. She’d come on so charming that Jay had fallen madly in love with her, to the point where he didn’t realize she was casting a spell until, too late, he learned it was just a power game, and Claire never cared about him after all.

  Claire’s reluctance to talk about Jay—what if it was because she’d hurt him, and she felt guilty about it?

  It also made sense if I imagined that Claire had done to Jay what she’d done to me. I’d been so enthralled with Claire, and she’d dropped me so easy. For all I knew, poor Jay was still writing her wistful notes from Paris, or whatever place he’d buried himself after she’d totaled his life.

  His letters were probably as pathetic as the one I’d put in her locker.

  By the time I got off the train, trading its dry heat for the damp, dog-nose cold, my temples were pounding. If I’d had a quarter, I’d have called a parent to come pick me up at the station. Instead I trudged, shoulders hunched, every step a thud of throbbing accusations.

  Claire never had been a real friend, and she’d never needed one, either. I’d been a ready ear and a willing sympathizer whenever she needed a diversion. But the minute I’d bothered her, the minute I’d asked her for something, she’d tossed me to the curb.

  “Good gracious, Lizzy, don’t slam the door like that!” Mom jumped up from the kitchen table as I entered. “What happened to you? You look awful.”

  “I’ve got a headache.”

  Within minutes, I’d been sent up to take a warm shower. I came back down long enough to eat a bowl of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich plus two Tylenol.

  Then I burrowed under my bedcovers. Some New Year’s Eve.

  When I woke up, it was black. My digital clock read 11:27. As much as I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, it seemed wrong, especially since my headache had subsided. Might as well wave good-bye to the last minutes of 1988.

  But there was nothing to do. The house was stone silent, the boys and my parents were all asleep, and every bedroom door was closed.

  Parties were happening everywhere, and I wasn’t at any of them. I imagined all the Nectarines champagne-toasting in front of a roaring fire at some luxury ski lodge. I imagined Matt feeling up Miss Gunne Sax somewhere in dangerous proximity to his parents, all hot and bothered by the risk of being caught. I imagined Gage at the Parcheesi board with her sister and her glass of sparkling cider—and even that seemed more joyful than ghosting around my dark house.

  In the kitchen, I nearly broke my wrist scooping out a bowl of too-hard coffee ice cream. There was a slush of junk mail on the counter, including a rolled-up flyer and a small, opened package from Good Hardware, its packing twine stuffed into the empty box. I rolled the rubber band off the flyer and wound the rough string of twine in a coil around my finger.

  Settled in the den, I flipped open my sketchbook.

  I turned on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” to see the crowds in paper-foil top hats freezing their butts off in Times Square. Richard Marx was next up to perform, so I switched to MTV’s “Big Bang ’89,” which featured Bobby Brown and looked a little bit more promising.

  Leafing through my sketchbook brought a blast of the day back to me. It was crammed with doodles and sketches, a longer study I’d done of a guy leaning over to tie his shoe in the café. I’d sketched the bold, bright museum piece, too—and it burst back into my head with all the intensity of that first second I’d seen it, the same vibrant figures, the same feeling of jam-packed togetherness that made me think of clubs and concerts and all the places I wanted to be, reminding me that hiding also meant missing out.

  When I finished my ice cream, I snapped the post office rubber band over my wrist and triple-tied the twine around my hand. I picked up a pencil, and nudged deep down into that soft magic that took over whenever I began to sketch. I needed it especially tonight. Art was all I had.

  part three

  spring

  thirty-four

  “Hey, Blizzard. Happy New Year.”

  “Hey, Theo. You, too.” I yawned, wedging the phone closer to my ear. “Mimi’s not here.” In fact, I’d seen Mimi only once over break, when she’d picked me up for lunch at Saladalley on Christmas Eve—and she’d barely had time for that meet-up.

  “Actually it’s you I need. Are you free today?”

  “Oh.” I was now awake and on guard. “Depends what it is.”

  “You can’t tell Meems. Because she offered to help, and I shafted her.”

  “Okay . . .” What was this all about? What did Theo think I could do better for him than his kid sister? “What’s up?”

  “I’ve left it to the last second, but I’ve got to find Violetta a birthday gift to take back to school. A good one.”

  Aha, a girlfriend-gift mission. I felt the pinch of disappointment. “Theo, it’s New Year’s Day. Everything’s closed.”

  “King of Prussia Mall stays open till five today. I’ll come get you.”

  “Why am I being singled out for this VIP field trip?”

  “Full disclosure? I think you might be ten percent less of a dork these days, Bliz. So I’m enlisting you to help buy my excellent girlfriend something special.”

  “Now you’re just gettin’ on my noives.”

  I could hear Theo’s smile on the other end of the line. “See ya in twenty. I’ll beep.”

  Twenty minutes later, I was running out the door to jump in.

  “Thanks for this,” he said first thing.

  “I only got sprung because I lied to my parents that I was helping with the blood drive at the Red Cross, and you were giving me a lift over and back.”

  “See, because parents trust me. I’m basically the town hero. National Merit and All-American? They should build a statue in the park already.”

  “As soon as they learn to make one out of hot air.”

  �
�Nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck.”

  At the mall, we browsed for over an hour, finally choosing a book of poems by Elizabeth Bishop, and then at the Macy’s counter, a tiny crystal bottle of Chanel No. 5—after we’d sprayed and sniffed a dozen different scents.

  “A late Christmas gift?” The old lady at the register winked at Theo. “Smart of you to have your girlfriend come along and test our fragrances herself. Saves the embarrassment of having to return something, mm?” She winked.

  “Yeah, I’m careful like that,” said Theo, throwing an arm around my shoulders and giving me a bone-crushing football buddy squeeze. “Anything for my little honey.”

  “It feels a little cheap for our five-year anniversary,” I added, which made the lady’s eyelashes flutter in surprise as Theo laughed outright.

  But it was weirdly fun to be mistaken for Theo’s girlfriend, even if the reality was that we were out shopping for his actual girlfriend, and Violetta was someone I’d never even met. Theo looked hot in his barn jacket and unlaced work boots, his hair overgrown in a way that Mimi said their parents hated for being “girlie,” but I thought softened the razor cut of his jawline. And I enjoyed the sweet nature of the errand, even when we’d moved to the even-more-awkward lingerie department. Theo’s expression was so serious when he talked to the saleslady about finding something “classic but personal,” and wanting to get the size and style exactly right.

  “You’ve got your debate-team face on,” I told him as we waited for his selection, a plain black silk camisole, to be gift wrapped. “Remember when you were in sixth grade, how you’d instruct Mimi and me to try and stump you—but you’d made a double set of flash-card questions, one for you and one for us, so you could never lose?”

  “That’s why I was lord of the middle school debate.”

  “Excuse me, did you just call yourself lord of the middle school debate?” We both were laughing. “And you say I’m a dork?”

  “Blizzard, I seem to remember you being at my house many a Saturday night wearing owl footie jammies with attached wings.”

  “Hoot! Oh, wait, my retainer’s still in!” I pretended to whip out an imaginary retainer, which Theo’d had to wear for years—then jumped out of the way as he aimed a kick at my shins.

  Later we sat with our bags at a table outside the Orange Julius. “These presents put a dent in your wallet,” I observed. “Does that mean Violetta is the one?”

  “The one for now.” Typical Theo. “Actually I’m kind of feeling like Violetta’s birthday has dominated the past ninety minutes. How about you catch me up on you, Bliz? I know from Meems you got deferred, which sucks. Sorry to hear.”

  “That was bad,” I said, “but it was kind of the cherry on the cake.”

  “How so?”

  I took a breath and went for it. “Everything feels like it’s slipping out of my control lately—my first-semester grades slumped, I racked up major debt on my credit card, my whole winter break has been one big college application to a bunch of schools I’m not sure I care about—and honestly at this point, I’m not sure I care about Princeton, either. But disappointing my parents after all they’ve sacrificed for my education just crushes me, for real. I miss Matt, too, but I’m also kinda jealous that he’s off at Club Med having the time of his life, hanging out with all the bikini girls. And finally, I think I’ve pissed off a new friend I made this year, Claire, possibly to the point of no return.” I went into detail on that, with the letters and the money.

  When I finally stopped talking, I felt like I might burst into tears. I took a deep breath. “So now you’re pretty caught up on me.”

  Theo didn’t change expression, just stirred his icy Julius with a little plastic coffee stirrer. Then he gave himself a moment for a slow, overhead arm stretch.

  “Well, okay. First off, the hardest voices to tune out are your parents’ voices in your head. I’m always working on that, especially when I’m trying to figure out what I want to do, what makes me happy versus them. Separating out what you want from what the ’rents want is a step in the right direction. So that’s a positive.”

  A positive? “Well, that’s a different way to think about it, I guess.”

  “And it sounds like you’re not totally trusting your man,” Theo continued. “I was never tight with Matt Ashley, but one thing I always thought about him is that he’s a guy you can trust. He wouldn’t go out with you if he secretly thought you were too young for him. But . . .” He held up a finger.

  “But what?” I leaned in.

  “But if you two don’t get serious in the next month, you never will.”

  “Oh.” I blinked, startled. “Why do you say that?”

  “Guys move only one direction. Forward. Not in circles.”

  “Matt moves forward!”

  Theo lifted his palms. “Then the Club Med bikini girls are no threat.”

  Was I threatened? A sentence from one of Jay’s letters to Claire had haunted me ever since I’d first read it: I feel like I’m going to do this thing, go forward in this way that breaks everything apart between us and messes us up forever.

  In that one thought, Jay had sprinted out faster than any of Matt’s moves. Matt was too careful to break things apart and mess us up forever. But wasn’t that a good thing? It’s not like Stephen Clancy had moved forward with Leslie the right way. What was the basic movement of Matt and me? I’d never pinned a single satisfying conclusion to how that last night in Valley Forge had gone, especially whenever I remembered the surprise on Matt’s face, and how he didn’t seem to know what to say to me after.

  Okay, but maybe Theo was talking about direction, not speed or distance.

  Theo must have sensed my dismay. He grinned. “Look, it might be different for me. I function best in relationships where I feel like my girl would rather jump off a cliff than be without me.”

  I threw my crumpled napkin so it bounced off his chin. “Theo, you egomaniac. I don’t even know why I ask your advice.”

  “Too late, I’m giving it. And as for your pal Claire, sometimes being ice-cold—hard as it feels—is a cover-up. Could be she was just embarrassed that she had to go begging for cash from her aunt. You have to own some of this, right? You put her in a crappy position.”

  Under the table, my fists clenched. “I get it, but I also tried to do the right things, too. I wrote her an apology, and I called her five times. I wanted to work it out.”

  “Blizzard, don’t sweat it. You’re a great person, one of my little sister’s best and oldest friends. Any girl would be psyched to be your friend, and any guy’d be psyched to date ya.” He said it casually, his tone taking the steam out of it, but as always, Theo could get me swoony with one hand tied behind his back.

  Later, when he peeked in on the bag of Violetta’s birthday gifts, a private smile playing on his face, I couldn’t help prickling with envy.

  thirty-five

  “You.”

  “You, yourself.” Before I could stop myself, I jumped into his arms for his hug, which he gave me, in a crushing squeeze.

  “I missed you,” he said, his voice muffled in my ear. “I missed our talks. I missed telling you everything that happened to me every day. I kept wondering what you were up to. I kept wanting to tell you incredibly stupid private things.”

  “Me, too,” I said, my voice equally snuffed into his shoulder. I felt like I could have drowned in my own relief, hearing Matt tell me that he missed me.

  When we pried apart to look at each other, and then he pulled me close again, this time for a kiss, a familiar sweetness that melted through me before he released me with a smile, then twirled and dipped me. “Don’t kill me for saying this, but I always wanted to learn those dumb dances you see on TV shows. Like, how funny would it be at prom if you just busted out a tango, right?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” I let him spin me one way, then the other
. “Learning tango and wearing a cape. I have days when I really feel like—it’s absolutely a cape day.”

  Matt laughed. “Dracula or superhero?”

  “Dracula, obviously.”

  “Obviously.” We were still dancing. From upstairs, the sound of the TV changed as it went to commercial. Matt looked up. “Who’s here?”

  “Only my brothers, but they’re watching sports, they won’t bug us. Let me make you some cocoa?”

  “Sure. It’s freezing outside.” Then he asked, as he followed me to the kitchen, “So, you ready to go back?”

  “Overready,” I said over my shoulder. New Year’s Day was Sunday this year, so we’d had today off, but school reopened tomorrow. “It’s my official last day of being grounded. Today we took down the tree and did like fifty hours of house cleaning for January back-to-school. Swift-family tradition.”

  “Yeah, Mom returned our decorations to the vault and started marking Christmas gifts for return and exchange. Ashley-family tradition.”

  As I was rummaging for the hot chocolate tin, Matt came up close. “Wait a sec, I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small box. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Oh my gosh!” He’d told me he’d planned to get me something over break, but I wasn’t prepared for how pretty the box was. The last week I’d seen him, I’d given him an early, signed edition of Dune, one of our favorites. I’d found it in a secondhand bookshop in Radnor, and it had cost me forty dollars, but I couldn’t pass it up.

  The paper gave way to a white box, and inside the box was a velvet jewelry case. Popping it open, I found a loose red stone, threaded with blue, cut into the crooked shape of a heart. “It’s a Mexican fire opal, naturally heart shaped,” Matt told me as I rolled it into my palm. “They were selling them in Cabo.”