Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  “I did show a couple of them to Mr. Steele, the head of Strickland. He said it was all a terrible mistake, and I should get rid of them. He said it would be hard enough that Jay and I’d both have to live with consequences of our ‘foolish behavior.’ He promised me nothing would be on my permanent record, and I should be thankful for that. My mom saw the whole drama as a sign for a fresh start—she’d been struggling in New York, money-wise. And Aunt Jane convinced her to come here to take care of her while also keeping an eye on me while I finish up at Argyll.”

  My head was swimming with all of it. “The Mosers got to stay on campus?”

  She nodded. “Faculty housing.”

  “But he’s like a fox in the henhouse. Don’t you think he’ll do it again?” I hadn’t counted on that question striking as hard as it did.

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” Claire sounded as bitter as I’d ever heard her. “And it’s so wrong. Strickland was the only happy place for me, after my parents split up. I was vulnerable that way. I wanted to connect with something good and real, and Jay was part of what I loved about a school that had always felt safe.” Her voice was shaking a little. “Now someone else will be vulnerable. He destroyed me, and he’ll destroy someone else.”

  I searched for things to say that would combat the rage burning in her. “Except you’re not destroyed,” I said finally. “You had a terrible, painful experience, and I can’t guess how you feel about it, except if I think that maybe what happened to you is like my seizures.” I pushed for my courage, knowing Claire needed it. “I’ve always thought of a grand mal as my fatal flaw. That it was always lurking and waiting to be this humiliating story, the main story about me. It’s not till lately that I’ve been able to understand epilepsy as just another thing about me. A thing on the side, not the center. And it can’t turn into the reason behind why I’d hide from everything, or the fear behind every risk I don’t take.”

  Claire was nodding, listening. “I get that.”

  “So I hope what happened to you last year doesn’t become the main thing about you. Neither of us should beat ourselves up with stories that make us feel horrible. Let those old stories crumble, because it’s the new ones that matter. The new stories are all we need.” I could feel my hand on my heart, but I believed it so much, it felt like a promise to us both.

  forty-nine

  I spent another night at Claire’s so that we could go into the city. Saturday night, we strolled South Street while devouring slices of brick-oven pizza. I confessed things at random. I told her about the endless tangle of my feelings for Matt, I told her about my confusing meeting with the Custis-Browns, I told her about my decade-long fantasy crush on Theo.

  But on the topic of Jay Moser, I sensed that Claire was wiped out, and so I didn’t bring him up until the next morning, when she dropped me off for my Sunday shift at Ludington.

  “Send those letters to his house,” I said as I popped open the car door.

  “Wait—what?”

  “Jay’s letters. Get them out of your room. Stick them all in a giant envelope, address them to Stephanie Moser—or better yet Mrs. James Harrington Moser, and send them off. He’s her problem, not yours. Let her have them.”

  “Oh my God. Imagine.”

  “Yep. Imagine.”

  And I hoped, as I shut the door, that maybe she would. As much as I wanted to help Claire, I really didn’t have anything by way of advice. It undid me to picture him strolling around the Strickland campus while Claire’s life was a netherworld, living with her batty aunt Jane and with no real plans beyond running west, once she was finished with Argyll.

  Claire’s thumbs-up for art school was no surprise. The shocker for me was when I mentioned RISD to Mimi and Gage.

  “I say go for it. Art is something you never claim,” said Gage. “You should. It’s something you are just so crazy good at that you never acknowledge.”

  “Yep. Total claimlessness,” agreed Mimi. “I’m so psyched the Custis-Browns called you out. I can just see you in your future studio in SoHo with hairy armpits and a nose ring.”

  “Eww,” I said, though I liked the studio part.

  But I still hadn’t done anything more about it by later that week, when my mom and I were in my parents’ bedroom, folding laundry.

  “Strangest thing,” Mom began, already sounding so self-conscious that I looked up.

  “Strangest thing what?” I asked.

  “Just that Phil and Jean Custis-Brown had a bizarre conversation with me today. Jean has some nerve, not even working here this semester. But they cornered me in the faculty lounge and told me that they both passionately believe you should go to art school. Those words exactly. Passionately believe. They spoke in a very aggressive way. Honestly, I felt attacked.” Mom reached in for a pair of Owen’s jeans, bisected them, then squared them into his clean laundry stack. “I told them that it was up to you.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Is it?”

  “I mean”—Mom sighed—“of course it is. If you want to make a silly mistake without any sort of adult perspective about how life actually works. Then, yes. That is your youthful mistake to make, with Dad’s and my blessing.”

  The grinding twist of a fight was inside me. I snapped a washcloth from the basket. “Jean said in twenty years, she never gave anyone a ninety-six in art before me.”

  Mom made a sympathetic face. “Lizzy, I get it. You have growing pains. And I’m sure art feels like a wonderful escape and even a rebellion, when you work so hard on your core subjects. But once you get into Princeton, I think you might feel differently.”

  “I could take some art classes at Princeton. Art feels like a bigger thing than an escape.”

  “However the muse moves you.” Mom rolled her eyes slightly. “But the point is, the odds of becoming some superstar like Keith Fairley—that’s a complete lotto ticket. I would caution you not to throw away your future to make a point to Dad and me. Because we’ll still love you, no matter what. Even if you fail. But there you are, failed. And where did all that arty rebellion get you, in the end?”

  The noise in my head was too loud. Later, when I’d cooled down, I was able to see the fault in her argument. Later, I had a hundred perfect comebacks. But not in the moment. “Keith Haring, you mean,” was all I said. “Keith Fairley is one of Owen’s friends from Little League.”

  fifty

  Theo was going to Bermuda with the Kims for spring break.

  “Sure you can’t join, Bliz?” he asked. “Violetta’s doing this all-girls trip down to South Beach, but my friend Clark’s coming, and it’d be a good-friend foursome with you and Mimi.”

  “I know, I know. Mimi gave me the rundown. But it’s just way too expensive,” I told him. “I’ve still got extra hours at Ludington, and this isn’t the best time to run up debt now that I’m pretty much out of it. But I really wish I could go.” When the call waiting beeped, I knew it was Matt, and I almost didn’t pick up except that Theo had to get off, too.

  Theo’s calls were so rare, usually just for information—like this one. But my thoughts drifted back to it, even as I flipped on with Matt to hear about how much he was dreading going away with his family to Hilton Head, where he’d been half a dozen times before.

  It was exciting to think Theo wanted me along on the family trip—and it didn’t feel like he was exactly asking me to round out a friend foursome.

  “You should hang out with Dave this week,” said Matt right before we hung up. “Since you’re around all spring break, and Claire’s going to be in Florida.”

  Dave still felt too much like a stranger. “Tell him if he calls, I’ll pick up.” But I wouldn’t be making the first move.

  That call came in sooner than I’d thought, on the Friday afternoon that school let out.

  “We’re spring break’s leftovers, Li
zzy,” he said. His voice was deep and gravelly, unfamiliar enough that I’d snapped to attention. “We should make the most of it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “That would be nothing. Want to meet up? Get depressed together that we’re not on the beach drinking piña coladas?”

  “A misery-loves-company date?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Cool. I hate piña coladas anyway.”

  I took the train into Suburban Station, walking distance from the patisserie Dave had suggested. He was already there, reading the New York Times.

  “So what’s the news?”

  “Not much. This guy’s gone.” He let me see what he’d been reading, the obituary of a famous photographer, the one who’d sometimes dressed up like a woman or the devil. I thought of the last time when I’d been out with Dave, and how he’d made fun of the skinny guy with HIV, when underneath all the time, he must be so freaked out by this new world order of men dying everywhere we looked, and him hardly allowed to react to it, except to joke it off.

  Dave signaled the waitress. We ordered hot coffees and decided to split some fluffy pastry things, a cheese followed by blueberry. Then he folded up the newspaper and gave himself a minute to stare out the window at the gray snow crusted high on the sidewalks.

  “Do you think about it? Like it could happen to you?” I asked softly.

  “Yeah, sure I do,” he answered. “But I also grew up knowing something was going on. Dad’s lost too many friends to count. He stopped taking me to funerals because he said no kid should have to attend that many.”

  “I didn’t know your dad was . . .”

  “Out? He’s not at work. But my mom died when I was in second grade—cancer, and Dad wanted to be honest with me about them. That they’d had this quickie relationship and then agreed to be friends and raise me together, that she would have accepted me for who I was, because she totally supported my dad. All that.”

  “Do you think Matt will ever do it?” I asked. “Come out, I mean? To anyone besides us? Like, to his parents?”

  “No.” Dave’s face quickly turned scornful. “No time soon. I met the Ashleys last summer, when they picked up Matt from camp. He was even petrified to introduce me to them. As if just by meeting me, they’d know his dark secret.”

  “Was there anything between you and Matt?” I looked him in the eye. “Ever?”

  “We’ve only held hands. It’s a lot to admit, though, holding hands, and I was his first.” Dave smiled. “But Matt and me, we’re meant to be friends. When I met you at my Halloween party, I really hoped it’d work out with you two. Matt sees you as a soul mate. He wanted it all so badly.” Dave’s smile was sad.

  “Sometimes I think Matt feels guilty that I fell in love with him,” I said.

  “Sometimes I think you feel guilty that you made Matt know what love feels like,” said Dave.

  “Either way, love can be a pretty big responsibility.” We caught a glance at each other; somehow I knew we both were thinking about Jay.

  “That tool.” The notch of Dave’s jaw tightened as he shook his head.

  “And the fact that he’s still there. No punishment, nothing.”

  “When Claire first told me the story, I almost mailed him a bag of dog shit.”

  I burst out laughing, but later I’d remember this moment as Dave’s and my first—though not last—conversation about it.

  Over those next days, the idea began to cast its spell.

  We could do it like this, I’d start. Dave would listen in that way I was coming to know, a slight left-side tip of his head and his face stone still.

  “Or . . .” he’d say.

  Or or or. There were so many ors.

  We liked talking about it. We liked finding and dismissing our options. All week, whatever we were doing, going to the movies, browsing the vintage shops, searching racks and barrels for the Clash or Sex Pistols T-shirts, strolling whichever of the city’s campuses we’d wandered into, testing this new frozen yogurt or that salad bar, Dave and I were always talking about it.

  The plans changed shape a few times, but the idea stuck.

  “It’s crazy,” I said as we stood in the aisle at Blick Art Materials. By now, we’d finalized most everything. We’d even set a date: two weeks’ time, April Fools’, and that Dave’s station wagon (solidly crap) would be our car. When Matt and Claire returned from their spring break trips, all they’d need to do was hear the plan, then get in and go with us.

  “It’s only kinda crazy.” Dave picked up a canister and shook it to hear the ball bearing rattle inside. “More importantly, you’re the artist. What color?”

  But he knew it already, because he was holding a can of purple.

  Purple, the color of poison.

  fifty-one

  Matt didn’t want to do it.

  “This is a problem,” I told him.

  “If we got caught for this, my parents would cut me off. No questions asked.” Not for the first time, it seemed to me that Matt waited for our phone calls to say the things that he had a harder time expressing in person.

  “What, you think mine would be cool about it?” It was late, and I’d stolen down to the kitchen. One thin wall separated my parents’ bedroom from the upstairs den. I preferred a whole extra level of distance whenever I talked about the plan.

  “It would be a sin, in their minds,” he answered. “My dad hasn’t talked to his sister in fifteen years, over some fight they had—and I couldn’t even tell you one thing about it, except that I’m a hundred percent sure Dad thinks God is siding with him. If I got caught for this, my parents and God would not be my cheering section.”

  Into my silence, he said, “Come on, you know how much I want to be part of this, Stripes. But I can’t risk it. You think you three will be cool without me?”

  “I guess. But it wouldn’t be the same.” Our plan without Matt in it didn’t even feel right. Whenever Dave and I hashed out our plan, we’d seen ourselves as a foursome.

  So when Dave’s station wagon crept down my block at the appointed time that Saturday night, and I saw Matt in the front seat, a jolt of joy ran through me.

  “You’re my hero!”

  We grinned stupidly at each other. As I hopped in and slung my overnight bag next to me, I wondered if this was the real magic of the foursome. That nobody was more “with” one person than another?

  It also felt okay for me to reach out in that old familiar gesture and let my fingers graze the back of Matt’s neck.

  He angled back, just as he always had. Caught my fingertips and kissed them.

  Claire, our final pickup, was waiting for us outside, probably guarding the guys from entering her house, or keeping Aunt Jane at bay. But they didn’t seem curious, and Claire was electric as she leaped the distance to the car. Like the rest of us, she wore a dark hoodie paired with black jeans and soft dark sneakers. Everybody was dressed the same, my idea. My reasoning was that if anyone saw us—not that we anticipated it, at such a late hour—we’d be confusing for eyewitnesses. Privately I’d liked the symbolism, that we were four interchangeable bodies all coming together in this night.

  But now I wondered: Were we interchangeable, or was tonight a completely different thing for each of us? I believed in the artistry, Matt saw rebellion, Claire needed vindication, and Dave wanted the dare. In the end, of course, it didn’t matter. What we had in common was that we’d all shown up for one another.

  The radio was on, and we’d decided that finding stations was the job for shotgun. We’d all memorized the route, too, with a bathroom break once we were ninety minutes in. We stretched our legs at the McDonald’s parking lot, and dove into the take-out bags as we started the final stretch north.

  “Want to hear something that’ll freak you out? I heard apples in McDonald’s apple turnovers are
actually potatoes cooked in corn syrup,” said Dave as he polished off his last bite. “It’s cheaper for them, because potatoes don’t go rotten. Potatoes can sit around for, like, years.”

  “That sounds like an urban legend,” I said.

  “If it is, I’m okay with it,” said Claire. “I can totally handle eating old potatoes pretending to be apples.”

  “Yuck,” I said. “Old, sitting-around sweetened potatoes? I’m not sure everyone would.”

  “You think people would feel betrayed by fake apples?” Claire glanced at me through the rearview. She’d switched seats with Dave at the McDonald’s. We were all taking turns driving, even me. In some ways, I was more anxious about this piece of the plan than anything else. Every time I thought about driving for two hours on the highway, my heart started pounding, and I could feel my flushed chest warming up the wispy tin chip of my dog tag that I’d started to wear.

  “Well, I know I’m definitely grossed out and betrayed by potatoes impersonating apples,” I said. “Though it’s also hard to gauge people’s different freak-out levels.”

  “I think Walt shot himself because he tested positive,” said Matt.

  Nobody spoke.

  Claire’s glance at me in the rearview confirmed that no, she’d had no idea, either. Light-headed, I dropped my chin and closed my eyes, but there didn’t seem to be any easy way to absorb what Matt had just said. Even he seemed to know how shocking he’d been. “Sorry,” he added. “I guess because we were on the topic of freak-outs. It’s something I’ve thought about for so long. Too long, I guess.”

  Dave whistled through his teeth. “Damn.”

  “It’s nothing I know for a fact,” Matt said. “When he’d first started talking about it, I thought he was being paranoid. He’d caught the flu in September, and his roommate had mono, so for a while, Walt thought he had mono, too. But the last time I saw him, I asked him how he was feeling, and he told me he’d been to Student Health and he’d got tested and he was waiting to hear back.

  “He seemed restless, and he was really focused on this photography project. He kept saying there was no way he could ever have gotten sick. He kept repeating that part. It was like he was practicing that sentence to tell his parents. Which made me think—later, not at the time—that he already had the results. I keep rewinding it and replaying it in my mind. I wish I’d had the balls to speak up. It felt impossible to come out and ask him what was going on. But I knew, I knew he was more messed up about it than he was giving away.”