Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  What would our breakup even feel like? I couldn’t imagine that by this time next week, I wouldn’t be as close with Matt. Or that in a month, I’d know him even less. The worst part was that he wanted to go. And what was “better” than being his girlfriend? How could I be anything better than that?

  When Jonesy pulled up to my house, I jumped out with calm good-byes for everyone, though my heart was thumping with the force of my desire to keep it together. Right now, the one thing that might feel just as bad as breaking up with Matt Ashley was if they pitied me for it.

  And I couldn’t bear that. Almost nothing was worse than that.

  thirty-nine

  In bed, I’d let the tears fall until my pillow was damp, and I fell asleep, exhausted—until at some point, I’d bolted awake again. I sat up. Checked the clock.

  It was almost 4:00 a.m. Something had happened to me.

  My pillows were off the bed and my sheets were as twisted as a breadstick down by my feet. A nightmare. But I didn’t remember any of it.

  I could hear a hollowed-out noise inside me like static. Eerie as a hush of rain or a rustle of dry leaves, though it wasn’t either of these things.

  After a minute, I got out of bed and went to my window, to shake it off.

  Later that morning, when pear-pale sunshine had opened my eyes again, my depression about Matt took over, and I mostly forgot about my wee-hours wake-up. I stayed in bed all day. My parents, each coming into my room at different times to look in on me, were both semi-irritated, thinking I had a hangover. But since I hadn’t broken curfew, and since they couldn’t catch the sound of me vomiting in the bathroom like last time, they couldn’t accuse me outright.

  “What’s going on with you, Banana?” Dad asked on his turn at check-in, handing off a mug of tea. “It’s past lunch.”

  “Matt and I broke up.”

  “Ah, kiddo. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine.” I closed my eyes, sipped the hot, sweet, milky tea, and tried to seem like a person who was fine. One thing I knew for sure: I’d had too many seizures to blow off another week. “I think I need to see Dr. Neumann.”

  Dad looked instantly petrified as he kept his voice cheerful. “When is your next appointment?”

  “A week from this Tuesday. But I missed our meeting last month. I think it makes sense to see her before my assembly.”

  “Absolutely right. Smart thinking, Lizzy.”

  “No biggie. I just want to check in with her, that’s all.”

  When Mom joined him, she put a hand on my forehead, searching for that elusive fever. “Lizzy, I can get permission for you to skip this assembly. Mrs. Birmingham even suggested to me that you could give it privately to a few teachers in Mrs. Robles’s office.”

  “Wait—what?” I propped up to stare at the two of them, like a pair of hawks guarding my bedside. “Delivering my assembly to some teachers in Mrs. Robles’s office? Seriously? You really think I need that much special treatment?”

  Dad frowned. “If you’re worried about what your friends might think, you can get the school to ‘reschedule’ for May. By that time, it’s so late in the year, nobody will care.”

  “Well, ‘I’ care.” I made quote marks, imitating him, though smart-mouthing Dad was always a bad idea. “I just want to see my doctor. Why do you have to make me feel so weird about myself?”

  “Dad and I were only thinking of options.”

  “You think copping out is an option? You think hiding me is an option?”

  “Hey, easy does it. All that Mom and I do, we do from love.”

  “Lizzy, if you give that assembly onstage for everyone to see, obviously we’ll be proud that you tried, no matter what.”

  “For everyone to see me have a fit—is that what you mean?” My heart was pounding in my ears.

  Dad sighed. “You know that’s not what we mean.”

  “But now if I do mess up, you both can say you told me so until forever.”

  Mom went to the door. “I’m sorry you’ve had to grow up under such a tyrannical parenting regime.”

  “Nothing’s going to change your opinion that I can’t handle my life. You’ve got to stop overcontrolling me. Like, if I drive the car, or if I want to go skiing with Gage, you two will do anything to throw in a wrench.”

  “You didn’t go skiing with Gage because you were grounded,” said Dad.

  “I was only grounded for being deferred. I could have done those applications up in Vermont—or anywhere. You never like when I try to be adventurous.”

  “You were grounded for your debt,” said Mom.

  “Money that I’m paying back. Nobody had to bail me out.”

  “And your grades fell,” added Dad.

  “But I still made honor roll. Nobody else gets grounded for honor roll. It’s just that you two would rather have me stay home and out of harm’s way. Don’t you see how you both do that?” My tears were surprising me, skating in tracks down my face.

  My parents looked glum and baffled, as if I made no sense at all. They told me to get my rest and we’d talk about it later. When they shut the door, I threw my pillow at it.

  I was left alone until late that afternoon, when Mom came up to let me know she’d moved my appointment with Dr. Neumann to this Tuesday.

  The next morning, dragging out of bed, I gave myself an up-and-down in the mirror. My junior year, we’d studied the romantic poets and I’d even written an English paper: “Fragments, Failure, and Ruin in the Romantics.” It was something about the failure of Shelley and Coleridge to do something or be something. All I really remembered about that paper was that I got the highest grade in the class.

  In my heart, I always knew it was your basic bullshit thesis, and it seemed ironic to me that I couldn’t remember anything about it that might offer me any actual, takeaway knowledge—other than the fact that Matt’s and my “romance” had been a beautiful fragment, a heartbreaking failure, and now was pretty much a ruin.

  forty

  Spying me from her office window, Dr. Neumann let me in before I rang the bell.

  “Nice to see you, Lizzy.” We took our opposite armchairs in her office. “Tea?”

  “No, thanks.” She looked exactly the same as when I’d first started seeing her a few years ago. She still wore her salt-and-pepper bob tucked behind her ears and she still dressed in black separates, today perked by a chunky turquoise pendant that looked like it might possess secret magic powers.

  Her smile was her hug, because Dr. Neumann never touched me. She was very careful about creating an atmosphere where I would feel safe, not squeezed. Suddenly I imagined Jay Moser in his yeti mask, groping Claire. I don’t know why I always pictured him in that mask now. Maybe because I felt like he had tricked me. Maybe because he seemed unknown and monstrous.

  “You’ve been busy,” said Dr. Neumann. “Catch me up.” She looked down at her trusty yellow legal pad. “Your assembly is this Friday.”

  “Yep.”

  “Let’s explore that. You’ve rehearsed your talk? Are you comfortable with it? The lights, the view from the stage?”

  “Yes, all of it. Today I did a run-through with Mrs. Robles. Everyone does. We have to practice and make sure the slides are in the right order and try out the clicker and the microphone. That kind of stuff.”

  Dr. Neumann gave her notes a glance. “So you feel prepared.”

  Even small talk about the assembly had my knees shaking, but my anxiety felt too hard to admit. If I started, I’d never stop. “Super prepared.”

  “You’ve been concerned about this assembly for so long. Any thoughts now that you’re so close?” She wanted me to talk about seizures.

  “At this point? I’m just looking forward to it being over.”

  “I understand. Good luck! Not that you’ll need it.” Her study of my face felt lik
e she was scrubbing me for truths. “So, let me hear the rest of your news. How’s Matt?”

  My heart lurched as I nodded. “Oh, good.”

  “You were going to meet his parents, when we spoke last month?”

  Five million years ago. “Yep. I met them, and his brother and sister. Really nice family.”

  “What else is going on?”

  “Um, nothing much.”

  Dr. Neumann didn’t need notes. It was a thing I’d learned about her, over the years. Now she stopped pretending to consult them. Like an animal that’s just poked up its head from its burrow, she was on alert. “How’s your new friend Claire? You’d set her up with a friend of Matt’s. How did that work out?”

  I felt a painful urge of wanting to call my own bluff and start again, to talk about how these first days post breakup had left me crushed. All weekend, I’d wondered what Dr. Neumann might say about it. Her advice was always smart. But now, face-to-face with her, I wasn’t so sure how fragile I wanted to seem. “Everything worked out great, they’re dating now,” I said. “Matt and I are taking it a little slower.”

  “Oh, and why is that?”

  “My parents weren’t too psyched about my last report card, and they don’t want me going out as much, so . . . I don’t get to see Matt as much.” I shrugged like whatever. The story seemed believable even to me.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I feel fine. It’s fine.”

  “Do you miss not seeing him as much?”

  “Not really. School is more of a priority right now.”

  Dr. Neumann kept her face still. “And you’ve heard from Princeton?”

  Oops. I hadn’t said about Princeton. “Oh, right.” I nodded. “I got deferred.”

  “I’m sorry to hear. You worked very, very hard.”

  “I’m hopeful for April.” Dr. Neumann loved that word hope.

  “You’ve had a lot going on in your life lately.”

  Friday night, I might have had multiple absence seizures at Tommy’s house. Plus I had that 4:00 a.m. wake-up, where I’d had to remake my whole bed in the dark. I’d been scared. Dr. Neumann always asked me about changes like this, possible seizures and changes in patterns.

  But I’d been okay since then. “I’ve been fine. I’ve had one or two absences.”

  “Ah, would you like to talk about that?”

  “Just same old, same old. I’m fine.”

  “I understand. I want to note that one of those old textbook terms coming to my mind about this session is flat affect. A nice thing about you being so educated about your epilepsy is that maybe we can explore together what that term might mean?”

  “Flat affect as in empty inside?” Flat affect actually sounded like the perfect way to describe how I felt.

  “Kind of, yes. It suggests a change in brain activity.”

  I made myself hold eye contact. “Flat affect is fine by me. You think my episodes are always a result of stress. But these past months all have been stressful—and I’ve handled everything, right? Empty is the calm opposite of chaotic.”

  Dr. Neumann let the silence grow between us, a tactic that always worked.

  “What if you’re wrong about me?” I asked. “What if my parents are, too? For so many years, I’ve listened to you tell me to be careful, be calm, respect the condition. But this year, I’ve done crazy stuff. I’ve jumped out bathroom windows, I’ve failed tests, I’ve been drunk—but I never wound up convulsive. The meds are working. I can go have experiences. Isn’t it about time to let me grow up?”

  My fists were balled in my lap and my face was hot. Dr. Neumann was nodding along, but she always did that. “Lizzy, the aim of any treatment is to control the condition. I’m glad you’ve been testing your limits and adapting new tactics of self-regulation. I think you’re doing a marvelous job. And it would be wonderful, in my opinion, if you began to talk about it more openly.”

  “What do you mean? We always talk openly.”

  “Really? You don’t even say the word epilepsy out loud. You’ve admitted you don’t talk about epilepsy, ever, to anyone. You don’t wear your dog tag, you won’t attend group therapies—”

  “Why should I wear that dumb tag? By now, I’d have been wearing something for four whole years and never once needed it.”

  “Yes, but sometimes seizures just happen. We can’t predict the how, when, and why. But let’s explore this—you yourself have said you’ve never discussed the disorder with Mimi and Gage. I’m guessing that’s also the rule with Claire and Matt. How can you be your real self if you can’t be truthful about this issue?”

  “I don’t need everyone to know everything about me, for me to be authentic.”

  Dr. Neumann was all casual voice. “The impact of this condition on your life is real. Why not admit it? What’s getting in the way? Could it be your assumptions about other people? Fears?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t want people to think of me as disabled.”

  “Your friends already know. You can’t undo what they saw. You can’t control what other people might think about it. But perhaps your closest friends deserve to be part of a conversation with you, and to draw their own conclusions. No story is supposed to stay the same forever. I think you want to live a new way, out in the open.” Her eyes were hoping for my answer, an answer I couldn’t give her because I didn’t have it. “Don’t you think that’s safe to say, Lizzy?”

  Did I?

  forty-one

  “In December 1980, a young artist named Keith Haring noticed that black paper was being used to cover up old subway advertisements, and he saw opportunity. Instantly, Haring knew how he’d contribute to the underground world of graffiti art. It wasn’t long before Haring and his chalk drawings became a mythic and unstoppable force.”

  My fingertips were ice as I clicked my first slide, an image of flying saucers and babies. “New York City was captivated by Haring’s pictures of primitive animals, humans having sex, and men with holes in their stomachs. Haring has explained that he is haunted by this image, because he connects it with John Lennon’s assassination.”

  Click, click click.

  A gasp in the audience. These drawings of sex and violence weren’t too scandalous in my eyes, but the shock in the theater made my heart beat harder. “Simple, effective renderings are still a hallmark of Haring’s in-your-face style, and have led him to international fame as an artist and an activist. But first, let’s step back in time to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, 1958.”

  At that, someone whooped—probably Barb Wassman, who’d been dating that guy from Kutztown. Barb’s whoop was followed by laughter, the good kind. Keith Haring’s images were an eyeful. I’d picked a surprise topic, and the girls were feeling it.

  Except that my insides were waging civil war. I wanted to run off the stage so bad I didn’t know how to make myself stay.

  I forced a glance up for my first look out at the shadowy audience. I’d hardly ever been onstage before. Never been in a play, or in a music concert, or part of some dumb lip-sync act for the talent show. Where were Wendy and Kreo? Was Wendy doing the spaz face? Giving this assembly was worse than I’d imagined. Standing up here felt shameful, like being stark naked and covered in itchy hives. All I wanted to do was cry and scratch. I could hear my pulse pounding. My knees were banging together. But somehow my voice had caught a line and held steady.

  There was no way to pick out Wendy, but I could hear a particular silence in the air. A waiting, a hold. Curious. Maybe everyone was remembering about the music room. Or maybe they were wondering how I was holding up since the breakup with Matt. Did everyone know we were over? Had Kreo told?

  Don’t think about that.

  The gooseneck podium lamp lit up my notes, and a beam connected the light-box projector to the screen behind me, but otherwise everything was deeply, deathly black.r />
  Dr. Neumann’s voice was a warning in my head. Sometimes seizures just happen.

  I took a breath and felt the clicker beneath my thumb. Click. “Keith Haring grew up as the oldest child in a family that included three sisters. Even in grade school, he had an early interest in making art and mischief, and sometimes he got in trouble for being a prankster and a partier. But by the time he’d graduated from Kutztown High, he was serious about one thing—his art.”

  I was on the high wire. Whatever else happened, I’d inched out this far.

  Sometimes seizures just happen.

  “After a couple of years at the Ivy School in Pittsburgh, Haring moved to New York City, where his provocative imagery electrified everyone. By the next summer, he’d created one of his most recognizable pieces, Radiant Baby.” I clicked to it. “Haring once said that babies represent ‘the possibility of the future, the understanding of perfection, and the purest, most positive experience of the human existence.’”

  With everything that had happened between us, I hoped Claire was out there, and was remembering—in a happy way—that afternoon in October when she and I had seen that Keith Haring mural, and she’d told me about her Pop Shop pin.

  My next slides showed Haring’s early exhibitions, reviews, friendships, and influences. I tried not to think of Mrs. Robles lurking in the light booth, or my mom in the front row. I felt a sudden tip and tilt of the floor beneath my feet. Vertigo. I held my balance. Doubt was a silent circle of vultures in the air.

  I’d almost made it. Almost, almost, but sometimes seizures just happen.

  Pressing the flat of my hand to one side of the podium, I centered myself. “Haring often works at a very large scale. From Brooklyn to Berlin . . .”

  My sentence petered out. Nobody but me . . .

  Many times my imagination had thrown me out into the middle of this assembly, only to sink or burn up in failure. I couldn’t find the next sentence on my cards. But I knew it by heart, and I forced myself to lift my gaze from the card.

  “From Brooklyn to Berlin, his simple images speak a universal language that often tackles current issues from apartheid, to crack cocaine, to the AIDS epidemic.” I could barely trust that my feet were grounding me, or that my thumb understood to click.