Even When You Lie to Me

by Jessica Alcott

  I wanted to tell him I hadn’t thought much about the future since I’d met him. Deciding on a major seemed trivial now. “A little,” I said. “I like writing.”

  “Have you applied anywhere yet?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But they don’t have a journalism program. I was thinking maybe creative writing, but I don’t—I don’t know, really.”

  He reared his chair up so it was balanced on two legs. “Let’s pretend. It’s forty years from now. You’re looking back on your career. What were you doing?”

  I thought about it for a second. “Writing a bestseller about Russian circus folk.”

  He laughed. “You called it The Plums of Europe.”

  “It sold ten thousand copies.”

  “A hundred thousand. Mostly to English teachers.”

  “The critics called it a rollicking journey full of luminous prose.”

  “I bought it,” he said. “I read it seething with envy. How did you make those circus folk come alive like that? Especially One-Legged Vlad.”

  “Ah, you were okay. You became an eminent visiting professor at NYU.”

  “Well, I had insight into you that no one else did. I wrote an analysis of it called Strange Fruit: Digesting The Plums of Europe.”

  We started laughing before he’d finished. He liked the story too, I could tell. It made me feel like we were intertwined, like he too imagined a future in which we still knew each other.

  “Did that help at all?” he asked.

  “What?” I said. “Lying to ourselves about how great our future’s going to be?”

  “We weren’t lying,” he said. “We’re just imagining a possibility. Something to believe in. That’s all writing is: making sense out of chaos; giving random events narrative and purpose and meaning. That’s what you’ll be doing, right? So it’s good practice.”

  “Sure, I guess,” I said. “I would like to write someday, if any publishers still exist by then.”

  “They say dying industries are the most thrilling.”

  “Do they?”

  He shook his head. “No. No one says that.”

  “At least having to live in a garret will give me material.” I sighed. “I think my mom’s just worried I’ll never leave home and get a job.”

  “She has nothing to worry about on that front, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Thanks, I think,” I said, looking down. “I won’t object if you want to talk to her. Just…be prepared.”

  “I like a challenge,” he said. “I’ll get in touch with her and set it up.”

  There was a silence, and I knew the conversation was over, but I didn’t want to leave yet. “It’ll be weird,” I said. “You meeting my mom.”

  He looked amused. “Why’s that? Am I the embarrassment or is she?”

  “A little of both,” I said.

  “I’ll try not to break wind or visibly bleed for an hour,” he said. “That’s the best I can promise you.”

  I laughed a little too hard, giddy that he was trying to entertain me. “I can’t say the same for her.”

  “I’ve known you long enough that I’m prepared for anything,” he said, and laughed when I scowled at him. “I’m sure she’s lovely and most likely not a huge, unrepentant racist,” he added.

  “So you’ll call her? And actually speak to her on the phone?”

  “Is she mute?”

  “No, it’s just…”

  “Weird, I know.”

  “Yeah.” I got up. “All right, I’m really leaving this time.”

  “I’ll believe you when you’re gone,” he said.

  The afternoon of our meeting, I paced Drummond’s classroom while we waited for my mother to arrive.

  “You look like you need a cigarette,” he said.

  “I don’t smoke,” I said. “Though this seems like an excellent time to start. You have any?”

  “Not anymore.” He looked annoyingly relaxed. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt that was open at the top, and he had his hands in his pockets like he was chatting with someone at a barbecue.

  “You used to smoke?”

  “Why does everyone laugh when I say that? It was just for a year in college.”

  “I don’t know, maybe because of your impeccable fashion sense?”

  For a moment he looked genuinely hurt. “I like this shirt.”

  I stopped pacing and laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.” I liked it too. It was one of my favorites, in fact. He looked outdoorsy in it, as if he spent his weekends chopping wood. And he always rolled the sleeves up in a way that seemed to invite me to slip my hands inside them.

  “You get mean when you’re nervous,” he said.

  Even though it was perfectly obvious I was nervous, I was still pleased that he’d noticed. “Does it help if I say you look like an off-duty Brawny paper towel man?”

  He frowned. “No.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” my mother said from the doorway. I knew she’d hurried because she always hurried, but she looked immaculate. She held her bag in one arm as if it were a carefully wrapped present she was afraid of damaging.

  Drummond sat up when he saw her, as if she were the teacher and he were the anxious parent. “Hi, Mrs. Porter,” he said as he shook her hand. “It’s good to meet you.”

  “Oh, please, call me Julia,” she said.

  “Tom,” he said, glancing briefly at me.

  They both found seats in a way that was so awkward and polite that I nearly had to turn away in embarrassment. I slouched next to my mother and tried to catch Drummond’s eye, but he didn’t look at me.

  “As you know,” my mother said, “I wanted to have this meeting to see if you had any ideas about internships for Charlotte.” So she’d be taking control. I stared at the ceiling so I wouldn’t roll my eyes. There was a water stain up there that I’d never noticed. I couldn’t find any shape in it other than a blob. Blob, I thought, and nearly started laughing.

  “Well,” he said, “I know Charlie had a few ideas already, and I’m happy to help you look for some more places. I know a couple of journalists, and I can get in touch with them and see if they have any openings this summer. I also know a few creative writing programs if she’d rather go in that direction.”

  “That would be perfect, thank you,” my mother said. “I just want her to get some experience and see if writing is something she really wants to do. The creative writing is maybe a bit…Journalism’s a little safer, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “But it’s good to get experience in both.”

  “I work on the paper here,” I said, to remind them I was still in the room. I was careful not to let the petulance I felt creep into my tone.

  “I know you do, honey,” she said. She patted my leg. “But it’s different working at a professional paper.” She looked at Drummond for backup.

  “It is,” he said. “They actually put out issues, for one thing.”

  Her mouth sagged open. “Oh, I didn’t realize you hadn’t finished any issues yet. I was wondering when I could read one of Charlie’s articles.”

  “Technical problems,” he said. “By which I mean none of us understand computer software. But it’ll be worth the wait.”

  “I’m sure of that,” she said.

  They both looked at me. “What?” I said.

  They laughed like they were sharing a private joke. Drummond turned back to my mother and said, “I’ll get on that soon. Summer internships fill up fast.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “It was bad enough in my day, but it’s gotten ridiculous now. You should’ve had Charlie studying Latin in kindergarten.”

  “You couldn’t have gone to college that long ago,” she said as if there was no way he could be telling the truth.

  “Ah, it was longer than I care to remember,” he said.

  She chuckled throatily. “I doubt that,” she said. I hit her leg and she shot me a look like grim death. Then she straightened her jacket an
d ran her hand through her hair. “So the other thing I wanted to ask about was scholarships. Charlie applied early to Oberlin, but—”

  “You applied to Oberlin?” he said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pleased I had his attention. “I thought I’d told you.”

  “No,” he said. “I would’ve remembered a hippie college like that.”

  “Where’d you go, then?”

  “Will you believe me if I say Oberlin?”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I’ve got the Phish ticket stubs and the enormous student loans to prove it.”

  “Well,” I said. “Did you like it? Do you think I’ll like it?”

  “You’ll love it,” he said. “You couldn’t be a better fit.”

  “That’s good to hear,” my mother said. She was watching us with an expression I couldn’t read.

  “Sorry, Julia,” Drummond said. I tried not to smirk when he used her first name. “I interrupted you.”

  “Oh,” she said as she looked at me. “I was just going to say that even though Charlie applied early to Oberlin—and we hope she’ll get in—”

  I rolled my eyes this time.

  “—we’ll most likely need to rely on some scholarship money. And while her humanities grades are great, her math scores are…” She trailed off as if to mention them would be like telling him an embarrassing family secret. “Let’s just say that in math, she takes after her dad.”

  “Math is overrated,” he said to me. “Where has it ever gotten us? What’s your dad do?”

  “He’s an artist,” I said.

  “We don’t know where the writing came from,” she said. “Neither of us is any good with words.”

  “Maybe the milkman,” I said cheerfully.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “The sense of humor comes from her father. I don’t take any responsibility for that.”

  Drummond laughed. “Nor should you. Anyway, that shouldn’t be a problem. There are plenty of scholarships that reward ability in a particular subject.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief,” my mother said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You know I think you’re a great writer,” she said. “And Mr. Drummond clearly thinks so too.” She looked at him conspiratorially, like it was their accomplishment, not mine.

  “Clearly,” he said. “I’d be happy to go over applications with you, Charlie, but I don’t think you need it.” He turned to my mother. “She’ll be fine on her own.”

  “I hope she will,” she said.

  I shot her a glance.

  “Thank you for this,” she said finally. “Charlie’s our only child and we tend to be a little overprotective.”

  “It’s a pleasure,” he said.

  “So she’s doing all right?”

  “Mom!” I said.

  Drummond laughed. “She scrapes by.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said.

  —

  “That was weird,” I said, clutching the handle above the passenger-side window.

  “I thought it went well,” my mother said. Her voice went up like I’d hurt her feelings.

  “No, it was fine,” I said as she started the car. “Just strange having you guys in the same room.”

  She looked straight ahead. “Did I embarrass you?”

  I paused and then said, “You were both acting different.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just different.”

  She was quiet as we approached a red light. After we’d been idling for a moment, she said, “I had a lot of crushes on teachers when I was your age.”

  My heart knocked and I tried to laugh. “You?”

  “Mm-hm,” she said. “I preferred them to high school boys. They always seemed so young and immature.”

  “I guess,” I said. Was I that easy to figure out?

  “And it was safe,” she said after a silence. “I was afraid of boys and I knew nothing would ever happen with a teacher. I knew I wouldn’t have to deal with having a real relationship.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to take the bait. “Mom, are you possibly trying to imply something?”

  She glanced at me and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I’m just saying I understand.”

  “What’s to understand?”

  “All right, pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about if you want.”

  “I’m not pretending!” I said. “You seem to think I have a crush on my teacher, which is both illegal and gross.”

  “It’s not illegal,” she said. “Well, for him it would be, but that’s not really…”

  “He’s not—this is not—”

  “Charlie, calm down, please. Look, I can see why. He’s funny, he’s young, he’s cute—”

  “Mom! Please stop talking.”

  “It’s normal! I was trying to…” She trailed off. “Never mind.”

  She thwacked on the blinker and took the turn too fast. I braced myself against the door. I looked out the window toward the park, where two girls were chasing each other and screaming with laughter.

  “Thank you for trying to…understand,” I said finally, “but I honestly don’t have a crush on him. He’s nice and I like him, but I don’t have, I don’t know, feelings for him.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I won’t bring it up again.”

  Then I felt guilty. But how dare she intrude on me and pretend to know how I felt? She knew I was lying, but there was no way I could admit that I did have a crush on him, no matter how obvious it was to both of us.

  “Sorry I snapped,” I said.

  “I’m sorry too,” she said.

  We rode in silence for a few minutes.

  “Can we get some ice cream?” I asked.

  She laughed. “I suppose.”

  I spent most of that evening reading over my paper on The Brothers Karamazov, which Drummond had returned to me at the end of our meeting. At the top was a large A, and at the end, in cramped red lettering, he’d written, Excellent examination of the intersection of free will and morality as experienced through Ivan—but I still felt it was lacking in circus folk.

  “Hey,” my dad said. He stood in my bedroom doorway next to my mother. “You need a break?”

  “Sure. What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion,” he said. He sat down on the bed. My mother sat next to him. “We just thought we’d come sit on your bed and watch you for a while.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Am I in trouble? Did I win a raffle? Did Frida win a raffle?”

  Frida’s tail thumped like a heartbeat.

  “You didn’t check the mail today,” my mother said.

  “No…”

  “You got a letter,” my dad said.

  I knew what it was. From the way they were smiling, I could tell it wasn’t bad news. “Can I see it?”

  “We didn’t look,” my mother said as she pulled a thick envelope from behind her back.

  “This could turn gloomy in a minute,” my dad said, but he was grinning.

  “Probably,” I said. I took it and opened it, and there was a letter welcoming me to Oberlin College.

  I laughed. “I got in.”

  My mother squealed—I’d never heard her squeal before—and they both grabbed me into a hug. Frida stood up and nosed her way in, wagging her tail as if she’d had something to do with it. For a moment I let myself think about it: a new start where no one would know me, in a place where he had been. But also a place where he wasn’t anymore.

  My dad pulled away first. “You look less excited than I expected,” he said.

  “I’m just in shock,” I said. My gaze fell on the letter again. I picked it up and rolled it into a tube and squeezed it. “Let’s celebrate.”

  I spent a lot of time watching him. He was tall, and his shoulders were broad. He wasn’t stocky, exactly, but he wasn’t thin either; he was as solid and sturdy as a cart horse. His body always
seemed on the verge of overspilling its boundaries, but he swam often enough that it was roped in by muscle. I spent a lot of nights imagining what it would be like to hug him and decided he was big enough to enclose me completely, until we were so close that I could dig myself inside him and curl up in the hollow spaces. I loved watching him move around the room, juggling a tennis ball or sweeping his arms as if he were conducting our conversations. He could get our attention just by drumming his fingers on a table.

  He was casually graceful—quiet and steady in class, never quick or impatient, but if pressed, he could move with surprising speed. He’d effortlessly take the stairs three at a time or leap over the low wall in the courtyard if he was running late; boys would wolf whistle at him and he’d give them the finger without turning around. When he ran, it was with the easy springing rhythm of an athlete; one day after school, a group of kids tossed a Frisbee too far and he raced after it with long loping strides and leapt up to catch it with a nimble curl. He moved not as if he were weightless but as if the weight didn’t matter.

  He didn’t wear nice clothes—usually combinations of jeans or khakis and polos or sweaters—but one day he had a meeting with Dr. Crowley and he came in wearing a dress shirt and tie, and I wanted him so badly my vision blurred. For a moment it was so overpowering that my muscles went slack and my skull felt full of concrete. I had to put my head in my hands and close my eyes to ride it out. Halfway through class he’d loosened the tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt as he listened to Frank ramble about Wuthering Heights, and I spent the next twenty minutes thinking about slowly unhooking the rest of them. He glanced at me while I was imagining freeing the lip of his shirt from his belt, and I blushed shamelessly and looked away. By the time I came back after school, he’d rolled up his sleeves: he’d started neatly, folding the sections of fabric over each other, but eventually he’d shoved them the rest of the way up his forearms until they bunched around his elbows like bloomers. “Nice,” I’d said, and he’d replied, “I know; I just can’t stand suits. I feel too restricted.” I’d said I felt that way about skirts and he’d nodded solemnly and said, “Me too.”