I want to leave it at that. Maybe I should leave it at that. My half-hearted search turned up nothing, so maybe there’s nothing to find. But I’m not convinced. The franticness of Connor’s late-night visit, his worn-down appearance—it’s hard to believe there’s no significance to it.
I scan the room. There aren’t that many belongings left in here anymore. Most of them Connor took with him when he moved out. His closet door is partly open, and on the top of the closet I see his old guitar case. I think about how happy I was to see him with it just the other night, how I’d asked him to play for me, and even though he’d declined, I’d been encouraged that he’d been playing on his own. I sit on the old blue carpet with the case across my lap. When I open it, the musky scent of leather is released. Inside there’s Connor’s old guitar. Tucked into the lining is a red handkerchief neatly folded in a square. Connor used to polish his guitar with this, lovingly rubbing the wood in circles as if he were bathing an infant. I carefully unfold the rag and find it empty, smelling sweetly of the citrus-scented oil he used on the guitar. I refold the rag and put it back where it was, sick of this whole mission. I shut the case and redo the latches.
I’m just about to put it away when I notice the bulging pockets on the back. With shaking fingers I undo the buckle of one, only to reveal a small red bottle of instrument cleaner. I’m filled with relief yet go on to the second one. The buckle on this pocket is older, slightly rusted, and it takes longer to open. When I’m able to undo the clasp, I slide my hand into the worn leather pocket, my heart beating heavily as my fingers grasp something soft and moveable, like a bag of marbles. I pull out the object to find another handkerchief, this one purple. I peel back the cloth.
I’m unprepared for the quantity. I’d known all along what I was looking for, but I’d expected to find a baggie with five or ten pills, like the one Jack found in Connor’s pants. But this Ziploc is different. It’s packed with hundreds of the little white pills. This isn’t for recreational use. This belongs to someone who’s selling the pills. This is the stash of a drug dealer.
I drop the bag to the floor. My breath comes in shallow pants, like Champ’s after a long walk on a hot day. I stare at the bag and try to piece together what it means. Clearly Connor was here the other night to hide this or retrieve something from it. He’s either doing drugs or dealing drugs, or he stole them from someone. There are only so many possible scenarios. I think of all the college catalogs I’ve been collecting and leaving on his bed like presents, my own hopes for the future, a future I realize is slipping further and further away, if it hasn’t disappeared entirely. It’s not too late. It can’t be.
I reach for the bag where it lies on the floor, bringing it closer to examine. The pills are white, like the Great Rock skyline on a winter’s day. Except for the plastic baggie, they look innocuous, like something I’d pick up at the drugstore for a headache. It’s bad enough to imagine Connor using drugs, but to think he’s also supplying drugs to the island is even more terrifying. Not only could he die, but other mothers, mothers that I know, may also lose their children because of Connor.
I rise from the floor, clutching the baggie in my hand. My thoughts are murky as I try to focus on what to do next. I could call Connor, demand that he tell me what’s going on. But he’d only lie to me, like he did so easily when he was last here. I could call Jack. But Jack is a police officer, always a police officer, even when it comes to Connor. Much as Jack loves his son, he wouldn’t expect special treatment. In fact, it’s entirely possible that if I call Jack, he’ll have someone go to Connor’s apartment and arrest him. I wish I could call Evvy and ask her what to do, but I know this isn’t information I can share with anyone. Other than Connor, I’m the only one who knows this bag is in the house.
I need the pills gone. I realize this suddenly, how their existence underscores a reality that I’m still not willing to accept. The image of a drug dealer doesn’t match the pale-haired boy who cried at Peter and the Wolf, a boy who was afraid to swim in the deep end till he was eight, who wouldn’t hold a sparkler on the Fourth of July because he was worried about singeing his fingers. This can’t be my son.
If I throw out the pills, Connor cannot use or sell them. If he can’t sell them, no one can take them. It’s as simple as that. I know this isn’t logical. I know enough about drugs and addiction to realize that there are always more drugs, and that if Connor wants them enough, he’ll find them. The only thing that I can control is what will happen to these drugs.
My heart flutters rapidly in my chest as I bring the baggie into the bathroom. The artificial heat in the house suddenly feels oppressive, and I’m sweating, my work clothes sticking to my skin. A fine mist of perspiration beads my brow. I squeeze the bag in my hand and the pills click together like castanets.
I could drop the contents of the whole bag down the toilet and just flush it all away. Isn’t that what they do in the movies when the cops come? But the septic systems on Great Rock are old. I’m not even sure that the pills will go down the toilet as opposed to just sitting at the bottom of the bowl. Or I imagine the toilet clogging and overflowing, having to call Jack or a plumber or septic repairman and somehow explaining the hundreds of pills stuck deep in the pipes of my toilet. I could flush them a few at a time, but there are hundreds of pills. It will take hours and could also cause the toilet to back up.
I could put the little baggie into another plastic bag, take it out and bury it in the bottom of a garbage pail. But trash pickup isn’t till next Thursday, and though it’s unlikely that anyone will go digging in my trashcans, I know I won’t be calm until the pills are gone.
I take the bag into my bedroom and though I’m suddenly feverish, I find a gray sweater that I wear around the house. It’s long and soft with deep pockets, and I drop the baggie into one, unreasonably fearful of walking around my own house clutching this supply of little white pills. I walk back downstairs and into the kitchen. I stand for a moment in front of the closed cabinets, trying to figure out what I’ll need. After a moment I find the meat mallet, a cutting board, a small wooden bowl, and a dishtowel. I bring these back up into my bedroom and kneel on the floor, laying the materials out before me. I pour a handful of twenty pills or so onto the cutting board and then spread the dishtowel on top of them. The towel is pale yellow decorated with bright blue birds, a souvenir Evvy brought back from a trip to Maine. When I bring the mallet down on the towel, gently at first and then harder, the birds jerk and jump beneath each metal blow like they’re alive. After a moment I peel back the towel to reveal a chunky white powder, which I pour into the wooden bowl. I bring the bowl into the bathroom and pour the powder into the toilet. I flush and watch the powder wash down the drain.
I let out a long breath, feeling a little calmer already. This will work. I can erase all evidence. I return to the bedroom and sink back down to my knees, adding more pills to the cutting board, banging the mallet harder, more forcefully now, more determined to have this over and done with.
It takes eight rounds of hammering and eight trips to the bathroom before the drugs are gone. When I’m finished, my arms and neck ache. I bring the dishes down to the sink and wash them in steaming hot water and soap, then put them in the dishwasher. I turn it on, though there are barely any other dishes in there. I bring the vacuum upstairs and do the carpet in the bedroom, sucking up any fine fragments of pills that have been left behind in the wool. Finally, I take the empty baggie and soiled towel and put them into the trash basket in my room, then take the whole bag out to the car. Tomorrow morning I’ll drive straight to the dump and pay five dollars to throw the small bag into a huge trash receptacle filled with other people’s garbage. When I come back inside, I take a long hot shower and scrub my skin till it’s tender and pink.
By the time I emerge from the shower, I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally depleted. I pull on pajamas and get in bed and try to sleep. But every time I close my eyes, my mind circles back to Connor. What has
he done? And what else am I willing to do to protect him? I stare at the ceiling for a long time, afraid of the answer to both questions.
14
Evvy
When I get home from the small private function I catered tonight, Ian is still at work, and for this I’m relieved. I don’t hear him crawl into bed, yet I wake up Saturday morning to his hands circling my hips and sliding up to my breasts. I let him pull off my thin cotton nightgown, and I wriggle out of my underwear. All week he’s watched me warily, since he got back from the police station, armed with the knowledge of my betrayal. His hands on my skin are proof of his forgiveness.
We haven’t talked about it. He has told me the bare minimum—that he spoke with Layla at the bar, they talked about winter on Great Rock, she told him she was visiting for the weekend. There is so much that I haven’t pushed him on—if they argued outside the bar, why he’d been talking to her for months, how long he’s been cheating on me. Everything unsaid fills the space between us, and I wonder if things have always been like this with us, avoiding what’s real in favor of what’s easy.
I wonder when and where he had sex with Layla. Already she’s changing in my mind from that girl who got murdered to Layla. Did Ian sing that Eric Clapton song to her, crooning Layla in her ear? Did they do it in the bathroom of the Great Rock Ferry where Ian works, or in the back seat of his car when he got off work? Has she been in my house? It’s terrifying to think about her being here, in my bed, my sheets. Even though I don’t think Ian would actually bring her to our home, it’s almost as if she’s here anyway, her presence haunting the house even while dead. I wish her murder made me think of her more sympathetically, but I can’t help but feel a dirty satisfaction that she got what was coming to her.
Ian is a morning person, and he likes early morning sex, but Cyrus preferred sex at night, the bedroom a black cave where we found each other with our mouths. Ian’s eyes on me in the pale morning light are greedy, hungry for more than I can ever offer. With Ian, I sometimes feel as if he sees me like no one else ever has. He knows me better than Cyrus and loves me anyway, cracked edges, sharp angles and all. This is something that Cyrus and Caroline will never understand. There’s something else. Ian only knows me as I am since Serena’s death, and though I’m only half the person I was before, I’m also somehow stronger and more capable, maybe because the worst has happened and I’ve managed to go on. When Cyrus and I were together, before Serena died, it felt like I was always a disappointment; to him, to the girls, to myself. I know now that it was the depression and my desire to be more than a stay-at-home mom, and a poor one at that. It was easy for Cyrus and me to drift apart. Serena’s death tore us in half, but we were already broken.
With Ian, there are no little children to worry about. There’s more time to spend together, more ways to be attentive than Cyrus or I ever thought to do. Ian and I go for walks together every weekend, long routes around the island even on the coldest days. We have favorite shows that we watch together, ridiculous reality shows where we heckle the participants from the couch, laughing till my stomach muscles hurt. He takes me to dinner or to the movies, date nights for no particular reason. Ian loves to buy presents, and he’ll often come home with some small gift just because he knows I’ll like it—a pair of wampum earrings in the shape of hearts, the banana nut loaf from my favorite bakery still hot from the oven, a bouquet of daffodils that he bought for a fundraiser. Ian makes time for me in a way that Cyrus never could.
Beside me in bed, Ian rolls over and goes back to sleep. He looks calm and peaceful, his mind untroubled. I lie beside him for a few minutes, wondering when he will tell me the truth, wondering if I’ll forgive him or if maybe I already have.
I push myself from bed and get up to make coffee. The clock on the stove says it’s not even nine. Daisy’s bedroom door is closed, but that doesn’t actually mean she’s sleeping. I crack it open just enough to see that her bed is empty. I close the door with a sigh.
Daisy is twenty, old enough to live on her own if we lived in a place where rent was affordable. Housing on Great Rock is difficult. Homeowners want to rent at top dollar for the summer months, leaving limited options available for people who live here year-round. Each spring, hundreds of families on Great Rock are forced to leave their homes to make room for the summer people and scramble for overpriced summer housing. The summer shuffle, we call it. I’m glad that I can let Daisy live at home while she works her way through school. However, the rules for parenting a twenty-year-old are unclear. I can’t give her a curfew, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry when she stays out late. I worry when she’s out of my sight for more than a few hours. Daisy doesn’t have a boyfriend, not now, at least not one that she’s told me about. No one except Connor, and her relationship with him is even more dysfunctional than my relationship with Cyrus. Daisy and Connor don’t have the relationship of typical twenty-year-olds. What they have is grown-up love. The kind that leads to marriage. Or divorce.
Connor was a child full of light. His smile was mischievous and inviting, like he was willing to share the joke if you’d only ask. Fair-haired and freckled with twinkly blue eyes, his face was open to the whole world. But the last few times I’ve seen Connor, he doesn’t smile. His freckles have all but washed away, taking with them the last remnants of childhood. Now he looks angry and tired, his eyes flat and hooded. The only time he seems to smile is when he looks at Daisy. And I wish that made me happy, but instead it makes me want to scrape together enough money to get her the hell away from this island and him.
I bring my coffee into the living room and take out my phone. There’s a new message from Cyrus with “cars” as the subject. When I click on it, there are photos of two possible used cars for Daisy along with the details for each. What do you think? is the only thing Cyrus has written in the message. They both look good, I write back. Let’s talk later.
The message isn’t about the cars. Like Ian’s hands on me just a few minutes earlier was forgiveness for telling Caroline about the time he hit me, the email is Cyrus’s forgiveness for the kiss the other night. It’s always been this way with us. A push and pull. A give and take. Arguments and then apologies.
Later that night, it’s just me and a full bottle of merlot. The Great Rock Ferry is the large steamship that drives back and forth from the island to Cape Cod. He works the evening shift on Saturdays, and I don’t have a party or other event to work tonight. The last boat to the island arrives at ten, but Ian usually goes out with some of the guys on a Saturday. I try calling Caroline to see if she wants to go for a movie or grab a bite, but she doesn’t answer, so I settle in for an evening alone.
I’ve just poured myself a glass of wine when there’s a knock on the door. I pull back the curtain and see Cyrus standing on my front steps, hatless, in just a thin fleece that’s no match for the February wind. I’m glad I haven’t put on my pajamas yet and at least still have on a nice sweater and jeans. I open the door wide. The cold air rushes in.
“Hey.” Cyrus peers past me, likely looking for Ian, though his car isn’t in the driveway. “I was just driving by and thought I’d check in to see about Daisy’s car.”
I give him a small smile. Daisy’s car isn’t in the driveway either. In fairness, we do have a garage, but Cyrus used to live here. He knows all we use it for is storage. “She hasn’t been home all day. Come on in, though. Ian’s at work. You must be freezing.” He hesitates for a moment before stepping inside.
“It’s not too bad.” Across the road I see Mary Porter, my nosy neighbor, watching from her living room. She doesn’t even make an effort to pretend she’s not spying. I give her an exaggerated wave and she lets the curtain drop, though I can still see her shape by the window. Cyrus follows me inside and then stands awkwardly by the counter, glancing around the cluttered kitchen.
I lift my wine glass from the counter. “You want a glass?”
He wrinkles his nose in displeasure. “You know me. Never been much of a wine
drinker.”
“I’ve got beer too.” I cross the kitchen and open the fridge without waiting for him to answer. In the inside door is half a six-pack of Sierra Nevada. Yuppie beer, Cyrus would say. Far in the back are a few cans of Coors Light, and I pull one of these out and offer it to him. Again, he hesitates for a moment. I know what it is that stops him. It’s the part of him that tries to be good—the good husband, good father, good cop. And then there’s me, always keeping him from all that goodness. It’s why our marriage failed. It’s also why he keeps coming back. Because as much as Cyrus wants to be good, there are times he wants to be with me more.
After a moment, he reaches for the beer, and it’s then that I know why he’s really come by tonight. As he pops the tab, we both know it’s only a matter of time before our clothes are heaped on the floor. In the years since our divorce, Cyrus and I have found ourselves here before. Not often, but I’d probably need more fingers to count than I have on one hand. Somehow, miraculously, no one has ever found out—not Daisy or Ian or Gina, or anyone else from the island. I’ve never told anyone about these one-night affairs, and as far as I know, neither has Cyrus. It’s why I can’t hate Ian for sleeping with Layla when what I’ve done is so much worse. I do love Ian, and I think Cyrus loves Gina. Each time it happens, I know we both wonder why we’ve risked so much. We avoid each other for months, hoping we’ve really gotten away with it, swearing that was the last time, it won’t happen ever again. And then slowly, inevitably, it does. And the cycle goes on.
It’s Serena that keeps bringing us back here. Her death was the wedge that ultimately drove us apart, but it also binds us. Each time we find each other again, it’s like coming home after a long time away. It’s fresh air after being underwater. It’s sadness and memory and love all wrapped up in an unrelenting grief.
Everybody Lies Page 9
