Lies You Wanted to Hear (12 page)

Matt

The stewardess woke me to say we’d be landing in twenty minutes. It was a Saturday morning in mid-October, and I was escorting ten-year-old twin girls from New York to see their father in Madrid. Damita and Dalila Flores-Crane. I couldn’t tell them apart. They were tall and lanky and as beautiful as their mother, Ariel Crane, an internationally famous model. The twins already knew they had the world by the tail. Their father, Hector Flores, had been a mid-level player on the pro tennis circuit when he married Ariel. Several years ago, the couple’s divorce provided rich gossip for the press. Now, Hector ran one of his industrialist father’s companies. I’d made two previous trips with the girls. This time, Hector had invited me to stay for the weekend so we could play golf and go fly-fishing.

On my last trip, we’d had dinner together at his villa. The twins had gone to bed, and Hector and I sat on the veranda in the cool blue light of the swimming pool.

“I see you are a married man,” Hector said in English. He had been educated in England and had no trace of a Spanish accent.

“Yes.”

“And your wife, is she beautiful?”

“Very.”

“I’m sorry.” He put his hand up. “No offense. I only mean that beautiful women, so many of them have a way of…”

“Cutting your balls off?”

He laughed. “And putting them on a string. But when she walks in the room and all the men turn their heads, you feel your chest swelling up with pride. Those are my
cojones
she’s wearing around her neck.”

“We’re willing victims, I guess.”

“Yes. And now my daughters?” Hector put his palms together and lifted his eyes to heaven and asked God to protect
los
inocentes
. He didn’t mean the twins.

We stayed up late, talking. Hector started telling me about his divorce. He said it wasn’t as sordid as the stories in the tabloids, but there was no way to fight it. Suing to refute the rumors only gave them some validity. Hector was mortified, but Ariel didn’t seem to mind. Her career had taken a dip, and she relished being in the limelight again. The most absurd part of it all, he said, was that he still missed her. I was grateful for his openness. I couldn’t conceive of the anguish I would feel if Lucy and I split up. A few months ago, she had found that stray earring in my shirt pocket. I wanted to talk with Hector about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to say a word.

I had met the woman in a restaurant in San Francisco. Like me, she was dining alone. We traded glances, and she asked if I’d care to join her. She was Japanese, with a lovely face and a heart-shaped mouth. I liked the way she kept tucking her silky black hair behind her ears. The red stone in her gold earrings matched her lipstick. She said her name was Shirley. I said mine was Fred. She was a site manager for a company that installed trade show booths.

I said, “Does the job keep you on the road a lot?”

“Constantly.”

“Me too.” I said I was a salesman. Medical supplies.

“I loved traveling for the first few years, seeing new cities, trying different restaurants. Now?” She playfully puffed out her lower lip. “Too many nights sleeping alone.”

It was strange the way women had been coming on to me in the past year or so. That rarely happened when I was single.

Shirley lived in Portland, Oregon. She said she had two sons, both in college. She wore a wedding ring but didn’t mention her husband. I was wearing my ring too. I didn’t say anything about Lucy and the kids, and she didn’t ask. Conversation with her came easily. She told me her family had been sent to an internment camp during the war.

“They sent your whole family?”

She nodded. “My parents, my three younger brothers and sisters. Aunts, uncles, cousins. We kids had a ball.”

“Were your parents bitter?”

“More
confused
, I’d say. They were very patriotic. My grandparents came to America before the turn of century. I’m named after Shirley Temple, for goodness’ sake. As I got older I tried asking questions, but the camp was a taboo subject.”

I ended up telling her about the death of my mother and how much I missed her. “It’s odd,” I said. “I think that’s the first time I’ve really been able to talk about it with anyone.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.”

“Then I guess that person’s not a stranger anymore.” Terrible line, but she was kind enough not to laugh.

We left the restaurant and walked along the waterfront. Even in late July, the air was chilly and dank. Shirley was tiny, barely up to my chin. She shivered, and I took off my sports coat and put it over her shoulders. (I was glad I’d left my gun with the concierge in a safe back at the hotel.) We stopped to look at the seals swimming in the harbor and lounging on pylons, barking for food. Shirley snuggled close to me with her cheek against my chest. I kissed the part in her hair. I loved the smell of her, the newness. Passersby would have seen us as two people in love. I wished I hadn’t lied about my name.

She was staying at the Fairmont. I was at the Mark Hopkins across the street. I hailed a cab. My heart thumped as I held her in the backseat—one beat for desire, the next one for guilt.

We crossed the lobby of the Fairmont. When we got to the elevators, she turned and said, “Thank you for a lovely evening, Fred. I’ve had a wonderful time, but we need to end it here.”

“Why?” There was disappointment in my voice and relief in my chest.

“I don’t know. Instinct. You’re new at this.” I didn’t reply. It probably wouldn’t have taken much to change her mind. “Blame it on the wifely code of honor. A bit of moral gymnastics, I suppose, but I don’t want to be the first.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me with her pretty mouth. As the elevator doors began to close, she tucked her hair behind her ears, and I noticed one of her earrings was missing.

When Lucy confronted me a few days later, she had already assumed the worst. I tried to explain but only halfheartedly. How could I prove that nothing had happened? It was like Hector said about the stories in the tabloids: the harder you tried to refute them, the more they seemed true. Besides, I had
wanted
to sleep with Shirley. Only her good sense had kept me faithful. As Lucy glared at me, I felt vile and ashamed. I was afraid she would ask me to move out and say she wanted a divorce. But after a few sarcastic remarks, she was ready to drop the whole thing. She said she hadn’t been a good wife; it was her fault as much as mine. We went upstairs and made love, and I was in the absurd position of feeling like I’d gotten off easy for a crime I didn’t actually commit. Then I got suspicious. Lucy almost seemed relieved by what I had done. I lay awake feeling agitated, wondering what she was trying to hide. Perhaps she was having an affair herself. But then why bring up the earring at all? Why not simply stash it away and use it to assuage her own guilt?

I got up with Nathan in the middle of the night, then slept in the spare bedroom. The next day Lucy acted like nothing had happened. Everything back to normal, if not more so—bacon and eggs on the table for breakfast, a kiss before I left for work. I obsessed about it all day. I kept thinking about the rage and jealousy and unbearable physical revulsion I would feel if I knew she had cheated on me.

Then I finally realized she already had. It was the night she’d gone off with Griffin and left that note tacked to her door. She’d fucked him, knowing she was pregnant with our child. Fucked him and lied about it. I’d had the same thought back then but quickly put it out of my mind. I was too much in love and believed what I wanted to believe. Now I felt as much revulsion with myself as I did with her. How could I have been such a fool?

It took me a long time to calm down. Maybe she hadn’t lied about that night with Griffin, but I still couldn’t understand her reaction to my supposed infidelity. I wanted more than a pout and a shrug. I wanted all those crazy, conflicting emotions that love brings. The anger that comes from being betrayed.

In the end, I wasn’t sure who had been hurt more, her or me.

***

When the plane landed I got our bags and took the twins through customs. Hector was not at the gate. A woman called out their names and hurried toward us, high heels clicking on the terrazzo floor. The girls ran to her shouting,
Tia, tia
. She introduced herself to me as Hector’s sister Alma. She said there had been a crisis at one of their factories. Hector had gone to Zaragoza yesterday and wasn’t sure when he’d return. Alma told me she was taking the girls to see their grandparents in Castellón for the weekend, but I was welcome to stay at Hector’s villa. The cook was there. Arrangements had been made for me to play golf at Hector’s club.

The idea of being there alone did not appeal to me, and I politely declined. Pan Am had a flight leaving for Boston in an hour. I was disappointed that Hector had to cancel, but maybe it was all for the best. Lucy had taken Sarah and Nathan to her parents’ house for the weekend. I could fly home and catch up on my paperwork. It wasn’t easy trying to balance work and family. When I wasn’t traveling, I liked to get home by five-thirty so I could take the kids off Lucy’s hands. Even with Brenda’s help, it often seemed like she was about to unravel.

It was four in the afternoon when the plane arrived in Boston, a balmy Indian summer day. My car was in the airport parking lot. (I still owned the T-bird but rarely drove it. Now I had a Volvo.) Traffic was light. I breezed through the tunnel and got on Storrow Drive. My office was in the back room of Javi’s flower shop in Brookline. I collected a bunch of paperwork from my desk and headed home.

I did a double take when I saw Lucy’s car parked in the front of the house. She had said she and the kids were leaving for her parents’ yesterday. I felt my pulse quicken, my thoughts whipsawing between suspicion and dread. There weren’t any messages from her with the answering service. Maybe Lucy had gotten into one of her classic battles with Amanda and cut the visit short. I parked across the street and got out of the car. The sound of Lucy’s laughter stole through an open window in our bedroom on the second floor. For a minute or two I stood on the sidewalk, trying to decide what to do next. I wanted to believe my wife was at home with our children, but I couldn’t hang on to that illusion.

Our front door opened into the foyer. There was a staircase on the right and a long hall to the kitchen straight ahead. Lucy was coming down the hall in a silver-blue kimono I had never seen before. She had a green beer bottle in one hand and a glass of red wine in the other. For an instant, I found myself thinking what great legs she had.

“Matt, you’re home,” she said, trying to sound casual.

“Yeah, Hector had to cancel our weekend.” I put my bags down. “Are the kids here?”

“No, they’re still with my folks.”

“Is that beer for me?”

She looked at the bottle, then handed it to me. “Yes, perfect timing.” Her voice was giddy, her eyes glassy and filled with fear.

“Let’s go upstairs.”

“Matt, we have to talk.”

“We can talk upstairs.”

“Please, Matt, let’s just—”

I lifted my chin. “Go!”

She didn’t move. I grabbed her upper arm, and wine spilled out of the glass and made a dark stain on the front of her kimono.

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t do this.”

I squeezed her arm tighter and led her up the stairs. The staircase rose half a flight and turned left. Griffin was standing on the landing at the top in bare feet and blue jeans with the tails of a white shirt hanging out.

“You must be Griffin,” I said.

“I am.” He had the same stoned eyes as Lucy.

I gave him the beer. “I think this is for you.”

Lucy said, “Please, Matt, let’s all go downstairs and talk.”

“Sure, okay.” I eased past Griffin. “I just want to check out the crime scene first.”

They followed me into the bedroom. The sheets on the bed were rumpled; Lucy’s black panties lay on the floor. On the nightstand was a bong, a bottle of baby oil, and a hairbrush with a thick, smooth handle. I looked at Lucy and back at the nightstand. I clutched my stomach and bent over double and let out an anguished cry.

“Matt!”
Lucy rushed over to me. She put her hands on my shoulders and started rubbing the back of my neck.

Her touch felt repulsive, but I didn’t have the strength to move away. I was gasping, unable to catch my breath. Lucy said something, her face near mine, but I couldn’t make out the words. I knocked her down and grabbed a fistful of hair and slapped her twice.

“Matt, stop!” she screamed, her arms flailing as I tightened my grip on her hair.

“What’s the matter, honey?” My face was close to hers, spit flying as I spoke. “I thought you liked it rough.”

I saw a flash of green out of the corner of my eye and felt a burst of pain in my left ear. I let go of Lucy and staggered and fell to one knee. Griffin was standing over me, still holding the broken beer bottle. He tried to kick me, but I caught his foot, and he lost his balance and went down hard on his back. I lunged for him, but he crabbed away from me. Bits of glass dug into my palms. I stood up but was having trouble keeping my balance. Strobe lights flashed behind my eyes. Warm blood ran down the side of my face and under the collar of my shirt. I thought for a second I’d gone deaf, no sounds whatsoever in my head. Then there was a loud crash as Griffin knocked over the fireplace tools and scattered them across the hearth. Lucy was slumped against the bed like a discarded doll. Her eyes were filled with terror, her face and chest freckled with blood. Her kimono had come undone. I could see the umbrella tattoo and the dark triangle of hair between her legs. When I turned back to Griffin, he was holding the poker from the fireplace in his right hand. My eyes locked on his.

“Bad idea,” I said. Then I reached under my sports coat and pulled out my gun.

Lucy

“Nanda! Mommy!” Sarah said. “Watch me. Watch!”

She was riding her Big Wheel like a scooter, one foot planted on the seat, the other pumping the pavement of the driveway to pick up speed.

Amanda puffed on her cigarette. “Be careful, sweetheart.”

Sarah turned her head to make sure we were watching and stretched her leg out behind her like a bareback rider; then she steered the Big Wheel past the rhododendron onto the lawn, dove and rolled over a few times, and came up laughing.

It was Saturday morning. I had driven down to New Canaan with the kids yesterday afternoon to spend the weekend. That was the ploy, anyway. I told Amanda I’d called the answering machine at home early this morning and gotten a frantic message from Tillie saying she needed me at the restaurant. Amanda knew I was lying but didn’t question me. Sarah did another trick with the Big Wheel.

“I have to get going,” I said. I was holding Nathan on my hip, an overnight bag at my feet.

“Go. I’ll be fine.” She hesitated for a moment. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I trust you, Mom. You’re great with them.”

“Thank you. But that’s not what I meant.”

“Don’t worry. You taught me well.”

She pursed her lips. “You’re right, I’m no one to talk. But you’re swimming in dangerous waters, honey. People get hurt.”

“Sounds like you have some regrets.”

“Oh yes, bushels full.” She handed me her cigarette and took Nathan in her arms. “Guess you have the right to collect your own.”

“Are you disappointed or envious?”

“Little of both, I suppose.” She smiled. “You look like you’re glowing at the moment. Depends on how it all works out.”

I picked up my overnight bag and put it in the back of my station wagon.

“I’ll call this evening to check in. Oh wait, I almost forgot.” I unhooked Nathan’s car seat. “Do you want me to put it in your car for you?”

“No, I can do it.” She took the car seat from me and set it on the ground.

I kissed Nathan, then called out to Sarah to come say goodbye. “You be good for Nanda. Help her take care of your little brother, okay?”

“I will,” Sarah said.

I gave her a hug and a kiss. When I got in the car, I rolled down the window and said to Amanda, “If Matt calls…”

“I’ll give him your love,” she said, being snide and protective in the same breath.

It was quarter to eleven, leaving me plenty of time to drive back to Boston and meet Griffin at two. I stopped at a service station for gas and cigarettes and got on the Merritt Parkway. Tommy Tutone was on the radio, singing Sarah’s favorite song—“867-5309”—impossible not to sing along. I wondered how many thousands of prank calls it had spawned, kids dialing the number in every area code across the country. Prank calls were a rite of passage for Jill and me back in junior high. We’d call the homes of girls in rival factions, boys we had crushes on.
8-6-7-5-3-0-ny-ay-yine.

A horn blared as I started to change lanes. I hadn’t seen the car in the blind spot on my left and had to swerve to avoid a collision. The driver gave me the finger as he went by.

I missed Jill. The
old
Jill—mischievous, irreverent, blunt—not the one with the perfect house, perfect husband, three perfect kids (and hoping for more). We still spoke on the phone a few times a week but didn’t see each other much. Jill had a way of talking about the world that put me in a silent rage. She couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t living a perfectly happy life like her own, as if mistakes and misfortune were acts of will, something that only happened to people who were stupid or careless or selfish. She tried to be supportive when I fell into my black hole of depression, but I couldn’t shake the notion that she believed I was being self-indulgent. God knows what she’d be saying now if she knew about the affair with Griffin.

It was hard to keep my composure the first time he called. I hadn’t heard from him since the night we fled my apartment in Cambridge nearly five years before. He had been on my mind from time to time, but mostly it was a matter of curiosity, wondering where he was and what he was doing, wondering if he’d settled down and gotten married, wondering if he ever thought about me. Our first conversation was short. I agreed to meet him in Quincy Market for breakfast the following Monday morning.

He was standing outside Faneuil Hall in a gray suit, checking his watch.

“Lucy,” he said softly, almost shyly, when he saw me. He took both my hands and kissed me on the cheek.

I smiled. “Hello again.”

He stepped back, still holding my hands, looking at me with those ice-blue eyes, and I had that same dizzy, Tilt-a-Whirl feeling I got the first time we met, no joint to blame it on this time around. We went into a restaurant and sat down; the waitress brought a pot of coffee to the table and filled our cups.

“You cut your hair,” Griffin said. “It looks terrific. Everything about you…” He shook his head, one of the few times I’d ever seen him stuck for words.

We ordered our food and ate and talked. I told him about my job at Garbo’s, about my depression and Matt’s career change, showed him pictures of Sarah and Nathan. I asked if he was married, and he said no, never even came close. He told me his father had died a few months after I last saw him. At the funeral, he ran into an old friend of the family who was putting together a deal to build a luxury retirement community in Key Biscayne and talked Griffin into coming on board. Things had gone exceedingly well, and they were able to replicate their business model in Annapolis; now Griffin had moved to Boston to lay the groundwork for their third facility.

He said, “Tell you honestly, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of coming back to Boston. I couldn’t stand the thought of living around here and not being with you.”

“Some things never change,” I said, scoffing at his bullshit but loving the kick it gave to my ego.

“No, they don’t.” He gave me a grin. “And aren’t we glad?”

I laughed, reaching for his hand across the table, and I felt like myself again—the person I
liked
, the one I used to be—which defied all logic given my tortured history with Griffin. Half an hour later, we were going at it in the darkened stairwell of a parking garage, my skirt hiked up around my waist. Some so-called experts say that having an affair has nothing to do with sex; the physical stuff is simply an expression of some deeper longing. But it sure
feels
like something you need. You love the rush, and when it wears off, all you can think about is how and when you can get it again.

Griffin and I met once or twice a week. It was easy to arrange, especially with Matt’s business trips. The guilt I felt had more to do with the kids than Matt, but I needed to talk about my affair with someone. I called Carla and said I wanted to come in for a tune-up. My last session with her had been shortly after Matt and I were married.

Carla had gotten her teeth fixed; otherwise, everything was the same. I spent the first fifteen minutes in her office chattering nervously before I told her about Griffin

Carla nodded as if she already knew. “How long have you been seeing him?”

“About a month.” It was closer to three.

“And you don’t want to stop?”

“Not exactly.”

Carla picked a few pills of lint from the sleeve of her sweater and weighed them in her hand. “Lucy, what do you want to come of this? How do you want things to work out?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here, so you can help me figure it out.”

“Let me ask you a simple question: Do you see yourself staying married to Matt for the rest of your life?”

“I love him, Carla. He’s a good man, a terrific fath—”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I shrugged. “No, I guess not.”

“Then the only issue is how and when to end it.”

“I don’t want to hurt him. I really don’t.”

“Please, let’s not get on that merry-go-round again. Do you really think you’re going to find a
nice
way to break his heart?”

“He cheated on me too. It was a couple months ago, with some woman he met in San Francisco.” I told Carla about the earring I’d found but not about the fight afterward, Matt raging at my indifference, scrabbling for some proof of my love.

Carla suggested he and I go see a marriage counselor and get everything out on the table. I asked if she could take us on, but she said that wouldn’t be appropriate—she preferred being my advocate.

“You mean you’re on
my
side?” I said, kidding her.

She smiled. “You don’t make it easy, Lucy. Some of the choices you make.” She made a funny sucking sound with her new teeth. “You have a way of…”

“Fucking things up.”

“You’re very good at it.”

“It’s a gift.”

***

I stopped at the service area on the Mass Pike. When I came out of the stall in the ladies’ room, there was a girl about twenty-five standing barefoot by a sink in a bra and panties, a pair of jeans and a brown T-shirt folded neatly on the floor by her feet. The girl splashed water on her worn, once-pretty face and ran her fingers through her greasy blond hair. She had the firm, slender body of a runner, but her back and thighs were scarred with cigarette burns, several of them still pink and raw. The other women in the bathroom pretended to ignore her as they traded sidelong glances of pity and aversion. The girl stoppered the drain with a wad of tissues, filled the sink with water, and began to lather her underarms with liquid pink soap from the plastic dispenser. I stood at the sink beside her and washed my hands.

“Long journey?” I said.

Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “All the way from hell.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

She gave me a crooked smile, as if to say,
You
must
be
joking
.

I said, “Is he waiting for you outside?”

“Please, leave me alone.”

“I could give you a ride somewhere.”

She seemed to consider it for a second, then shook her head. She lifted one dusty foot and put it in the sink, turning the water brown as she scrubbed between her toes. I dried my hands with paper towels, unable to get her to meet my eyes again. I started for the door then went back.

“I mean it,” I said. “I’m going to Boston. I know a women’s shelter where I can take you.”

“
What?
” the girl said, raising her voice. “You think me and you can just waltz out of here and drive away? No way he’s gonna let that happen. Even if we got lucky and gave him the slip, I guarantee you he’d chase us down. Run your car off the road and kill all three of us.”

A plump, tanned woman in a yellow tennis dress was standing by one of the stalls, listening, a concerned look on her face.

The girl turned, her foot still in the sink, and glared at the woman. “Any man ever love
you
that much, fat-ass?”

I left the bathroom. There was a nervous Leon Trotsky look-alike with a scruffy goatee and wire-rimmed glasses standing by the vending machines who I assumed was the abuser, but it could just as easily have been the paunchy fifty-year-old in the John Deere baseball cap playing a video game. I bought a cup of coffee at the take-out counter, my hands still shaking when I got back in my car. Eventually the man would murder that poor girl and stuff her body in a Dumpster. Or maybe they’d grow old together, locked in their grotesque dance.

I got in my car and turned up the radio, John Cougar Mellencamp singing “Hurt So Good.” I lit a joint and felt the fever of anticipation; this was the first time since the affair began that Griffin and I would have some extended time together rather than a few stolen hours. We were going to meet at my house, then head off to an old inn in the Berkshires. Whenever I heard Mellencamp asking his baby to make it hurt so good, it sounded like a perfect theme song for Griffin and me. Maybe the girl in the bathroom felt the same way about her guy, some warped concept of love.

Last week, Matt and I had the kids in the car when the song came on the radio.

“What’s that mean, Mommy?” Sarah asked.

“What, sugar pop?”

“‘Hurt so good.’ Things that hurt you are
bad
.”

“Yes, they are, but sometimes…well…”

I pictured myself bent over a red vinyl chair next to the mirror in a motel room, watching Griffin spank my ass with a hairbrush.

“Sometimes good things hurt a little, honey,” Matt said. “Like when I go away on my business trips and I miss you and Nathan and Mommy. When I call home and hear your voice, it makes me happy because you’re excited and you tell me what you’ve been doing all day, and I feel really good. But I’m kind of sad too because I wish I was there so I could read you a story and tuck you in bed and kiss you good night. So, that phone call is kind of sad and happy at the same time. It hurts me not to be with you, but it’s still good. You understand?”

Sarah nodded. Matt was always coming up with stuff like that. He didn’t give me a smug look, but to me it felt like he was showing off.

Two days before, I’d had another session with Carla, talking in circles, ready to leave ten minutes after I got there. I said Matt was too perfect. I was tired of trying to love him, tired of the burden of being loved. How could anyone live with all that devotion and understanding? The scale was tilted so far in my favor it felt like an unbearable weight, a fortune I was compelled to squander.

“Matt
embraces
me,” I said. “I know it’s supposed to make me feel safe, but it’s suffocating. He wants us to melt into a giant blob of togetherness. With Griffin, it’s the complete opposite. It’s like he frees me to be myself.”

Carla asked if I’d said anything to Matt about seeing a marriage counselor. I said I hadn’t, and she made me promise I would.

***

Up to the moment when Matt came through the front door, I hadn’t worried about getting caught—
caught
was just a word, an abstraction like
right
or
wrong
, conveniently disconnected from my actions—and yet it’s clear in hindsight that I had gotten careless, almost as if I had wanted it to happen. When Griffin arrived, I invited him in, eager to show him the house, so stupid and cocky that I tried on the kimono he’d brought in a gift box; then we fired up the bong and one thing led to another. I was very stoned, coming down the hall with a wineglass in one hand and a beer bottle in the other; for a moment, I thought Matt was a hallucination, his head haloed in the light from the stained glass behind him. I handed him the beer. He didn’t look surprised or angry, and I thought then that he’d set me up, his entrance arranged for maximum effect. I begged him not to go upstairs, but he marched me ahead, his fingers so tight on my arm, they left five purple bruises. Griffin was standing at the top of the steps. It felt like I was in a movie, everything in slow motion, and I kept thinking I could fix it, just make the camera stop rolling and change the script entirely.