Lies You Wanted to Hear (27 page)

She waited. I said nothing.

“I mean it. I want an answer. What’s my punishment?”

“I couldn’t risk leaving the kids with you, Lucy. The stakes were too high.”

“Answer the question.”

“Sara’s broken arm, Amanda driving them around drunk. Dropping cigarette ashes on—”

“Guilty, guilty, guilty. The accused has freely admitted to her crimes and thrown herself on the mercy of the court. All you have to do is render a sentence.”

“I did what I thought was best for the children.”

“Why can’t you say it? Why can’t you tell me what my punishment should be?” She looked at me with disgust. “You didn’t drag me into a court of law, Matt. You played
God
. And the judgment you handed down was that I should never see Sarah and Nathan again. Never hear their voices, never know where they lived or what became of them.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I spent sixteen and a half years waiting, wondering if my sentence would ever end. I would have spent less time in prison if I had committed manslaughter.”

“You were out of control. I couldn’t sit around for a year or two, waiting for the justice system to figure out that you were an unfit mother. Like you just said, you were guilty. What do you want from me? Do you want me to tell you I’m sorry?”

“What I want from you is this. I want you to go home tonight and look in the mirror and say,
Lucy
got
what
she
deserved.
Have you ever done that, Matt? Talked to yourself in the mirror? I’ve tried, and let me tell you, it’s
really
hard. Hard to tell yourself the truth. Even harder to believe your own lies.”

“I have no regrets, Lucy. Sometimes you have to make a decision, and once it’s made it can’t be changed.”

“Try it, Matt.
Lucy
got
what
she
deserved.
Five little words. Look in the mirror and see if you can make yourself believe them.”

Someone laughed loudly at the bar, and we turned our heads to the sound. When I looked at Lucy again, something in her eyes seemed to soften. She swirled the wine in her glass and put it down without drinking.

“Thank you,” she said. She stood up. “I feel much better now. I don’t have to hate you anymore.”

I watched her go. I felt hollowed out, not angry or sad or guilty or hopeful. Just empty. Wondering how she could still do that to me.

***

The party was at a small club in Encinitas. Lucy and I weren’t seated at the same table and didn’t talk to each other. The food was great, a sitar player providing background music. When it came time to make toasts, no one spoke too long or said anything embarrassing. They’d hired a DJ to provide the dance music. Sara and Ajit got things started, jitterbugging to “Oh Boy” by Buddy Holly. I’d never been much of a dancer, and I went out to the terrace to get some air. Three Indian gentlemen were out there smoking cigars. They offered me one but I declined. I listened to them talk about cricket but didn’t know enough to join the discussion.

When I went back inside, there were about twenty people on the dance floor. Marvin Gaye’s “Heard It Through the Grapevine” was playing. Sara was dancing with Elliot. It was uncanny how she moved her body like her mother, quiet shoulders and snaky hips. Like me, Elliot was an awkward dancer, but he was having a great time. Lucy was talking with a man who made her laugh. She was wearing a sexy green dress. I thought about the night we met. I could still see her standing outside the Café Budapest with one hand on her hip and a rose in her hair. Did she ever have a clue how much I loved her? The song ended and the DJ put on “What a Feeling” from
Flashdance
. Sara let out a squeal and grabbed Lucy’s hand and the two of them spun each other around. Elliot and Ajit joined in, all of them dancing in a pack. As she twirled around, Lucy scanned the bystanders and caught my eye. Her smile was luminous. Unconquerable.

I walked out to the parking lot and got in my pickup. I headed north on the 5, my hands tight on the wheel. I couldn’t get that image of Lucy out of my head. The way she looked at me with that smug smile. I’m sure everyone else could see it.

A deputy sheriff’s car raced by with its blue lights flashing, and I eased off the gas.

I tried to ratchet up my anger, but the more I thought about it, the more I started to wonder if she really was being smug. I never could read her very well. Maybe it was her way of asking me if I wanted to come join the dance. Wouldn’t that be something? All of us bopping around like one big happy family?

Just past Oceanside, traffic slowed to a crawl. Up ahead the deputy’s car was stopped in the middle lane behind an old Dodge station wagon with its hood up and smoke pouring off the engine. Cars were jockeying for position to get past the tie-up. I let another driver merge in front of me, and the guy behind me honked impatiently. I looked at him in the rearview mirror for a second, then looked away.

Traffic picked up speed after I got past the broken-down station wagon. As I settled back in my seat, I looked in the rearview mirror again, but all I saw were my own eyes.

“Lucy…” I said aloud, but I couldn’t make myself finish.

It was a beautiful evening, the moon hanging over Mt. Palomar. I thought about turning around as I approached the next exit. But I kept going.

1. From the first date on, it is clear that Matt is more taken with Lucy than she is with him. Is it the norm in most romantic relationships that one person falls more deeply in love than the other? After the confrontation in the bedroom with Lucy and Griffin, Matt says to Lucy, “I never had a chance, did I?” Do you think Lucy ever really tried to make the marriage work? Does Matt bear responsibility for their breakup?

2. Matt says that taking the children was his “fate” and he had no other choice. Is this simply a rationalization, or was the kidnapping justified? In the end, would you say Matt has been a good father or a bad one?

3. Lucy feels as if she can’t quite figure out how to be a good mother, yet she is unable to broach the subject even with her best friend, Jill. Do you think this is a common feeling among women? How do Lucy’s relationships with other women define who she is and what we think about her?

4. Lying is a key element of this novel. Who do you think lies more, Matt or Lucy? What is the worst lie each of them tells? For most people, there have been times when they would rather have heard a lie than the truth. In what situations has this been true for you? When have you lied because you felt that is what the other person wanted to hear?

5. When Lucy goes to the GrieveWell meeting, she finds that one woman feels that Lucy’s is “a second-class sorrow.” Is it possible to compare one person’s grief to another’s? Do you think that most people measure and compare their losses to those of others?

6. Once the children learn the truth about their past, Sara remains fiercely loyal to her father while Elliot is pulled in the opposite direction. Why do you think this is so? Have you ever encountered a startling revelation in your own life or in that of someone you know that caused you to rethink your entire world?

7. Lucy quotes her mother as saying, “Any fool can be happy. The hard part is feeling like you matter.” What do you think about this statement?

8. Lucy’s journal-keeping has a profound influence on her life. Do you keep a journal yourself? How has it affected your own life?

9. Is there any validity in Matt’s contention that the court system is biased toward a mother? When adjudicating domestic disputes, does the legal system today give fair consideration to the rights of both parents?

10. Did Lucy give up too quickly in trying to find her children? The children’s disappearance takes place before the age of the Internet. How would Lucy’s search be different today?

11. The last thing Lucy says to Matt is, “I feel better now. I don’t have to hate you anymore.” But she doesn’t offer him forgiveness. Are there some acts that are simply unforgivable?

12. Matt cannot make himself say the words “Lucy got what she deserved.” Did she?

13. When talking about the difference between movies and films, Matt says, “Movies were entertainment, stories that made you laugh or cry and kept you on the edge of your seat. Films had meaning and subtitles, slow, tortuous stories with bleak endings or no ending at all.” He likes movies; Lucy likes films. Which is true for you? If
Lies You Wanted to Hear
were made into a motion picture, would it be a movie or a film?

1.
Jim, at 67, you are one of the oldest first-time authors we’ve published at Sourcebooks. Tell me a little about your journey. Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, I guess I did. I wrote some poems in high school, mostly your typical teenage stuff about love and angst, then one long, obscure poem in college that I kept revising and revising. My roommate used to joke with me about publishing it in a chapbook called
The
Collected
Poem
of
James
Whitfield
Thomson
. After college, I spent three years as the navigator of a Navy supply ship off the coast of Vietnam, then I went to grad school and wrote my dissertation on the work of Raymond Chandler, but I never tried to do any creative writing myself. I landed a job as an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Miami but quickly realized I wasn’t cut out for academia. I joined a start-up company as a salesman and loved it. It was such a relief to be able to measure my performance in terms of dollars and cents. Our company grew fast and I was very driven, but I still had dreams of becoming a writer.

2.
What inspired you to make that dream a reality?

In 1985, I was turning forty and a close friend died, so that provided the motivation. I wrote a short story called “The Spice of Life” about a man who’s trying to decide how to dispose of a dead friend’s ashes. The story wasn’t autobiographical, but I was obviously thinking about my friend. I sent the story out to a few magazines but got discouraged after a few rejections and stuck it in a drawer. Three years later, Christopher Tilghman invited me to be a guest at a workshop led by the great short story writer Andre Dubus. At the end of the evening, Andre asked me if I wanted to come back the following week and read to the group. I was thrilled. This was my big chance to find out if “The Spice of Life” was any good. I don’t remember a single comment anyone made about the story, but the consensus was clear:
Not bad for your first effort, pal; now go write another one.
It was like the proverbial light bulb went on in my head. Writers write. Time for me to get to work.

3.
Did it take you long to discover your own style?

Yes and no. I could always construct good sentences, but I think my academic background hurt me a lot. I wanted to write
serious
literature, so I kept trying all these stylistic flourishes to prove how clever and lyrical I could be. It took a long time to realize that the goal is to keep the reader engaged in the story—anything that distracts the reader and makes him think about the author is just a writer’s way of showing off. Let me give you an example from another art form. No matter what role Jack Nicholson is playing, there always seems to be a moment when he cocks an eyebrow and gives the camera that devilish grin of his, and everyone in the audience suddenly thinks,
There’s
Jack. Jack Nicholson the
actor
, not the character he’s portraying on the screen, which completely breaks the spell. I can’t say I never give my readers that same sort of grin, but I try to do it as little as possible. I want them thinking about the story, not about me.

4.
If
you
could
describe
your
style
in
a
single
word, what would it be?

Clear.

5.
Are
you
a
fast
writer
or
a
slow
writer?

Painfully slow. It took me four years to write
Lies
. There are plenty of days when I’ll spend several hours working on a single paragraph. In an interview, Ernest Hemingway told George Plimpton he wrote forty-seven endings to
A
Farewell
to
Arms
. Plimpton was dumbfounded and asked him why. Hemingway said he was “trying to get the words right.” That pretty much sums up the struggle for most writers. I have no idea how prolific authors like John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates do it. If my full-time job were to
type
the stuff that Stephen King writes, I’d be a year or two behind.

6.
Who
are
some
of
the
writers
you
admire?

For my money, the greatest living writer is Alice Munro. She can write a thirty-page story that feels richer than most novels. She starts a story with two people who disappear ten pages later, and somehow that seems perfectly logical. She’s so good it’s hard to learn anything from her. I like Dan Chaon, Philip Roth, Raymond Carver, Daniel Woodrell, Margot Livesey.
The
Vanishing
Act
of
Esme
Lennox
by Maggie O’Farrell and
The
History
of
Love
by Nicole Krauss are wonderful novels. Two recent novels I loved are
The
Devil
All
the
Time
by Donald Ray Pollock and
Billy
Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk
by Ben Fountain. The books I like best all tell a good story. I think that’s what most readers want. It’s why airport bestsellers are mostly thrillers and mysteries. I’m not saying plot should be a writer’s first criteria, but I tend to lose patience with novels that plod along and never seem to go anywhere. I hate to admit, but I tried to reread
Madame
Bovary
last summer and gave up after fifty pages. There’s only so much nuance my mind can endure.

7.
All
the
authors
you’ve mentioned are fiction writers. Are there other genres you like to read?

Yes, I read a fair amount of nonfiction—history, memoir, biography. There’s a book by British journalist Anthony Loyd called
My War Gone By, I Miss It So
, about the war in Bosnia. Terrific title and a heartbreaking account of what it’s like to be a correspondent on the front line in a world gone mad. I also admired
We
Wish
to
Inform
You
That
Tomorrow
We
Will
Be
Killed
with
Our
Families
by Philip Gourevitch about the genocide in Rwanda. There’s a memoir called
Gone
Boy
by Gregory Gibson about the murder of his son at Simon’s Rock College. The book came and went in a nanosecond, but it’s a searingly honest account of a parent’s grief and his attempt to find out the truth about his son’s death.

8.
What
is
one
thing
you
know
now
that
you
wish
you
knew
when
you
started
your
writing
career?

I wish I had known how long it would take for me to get my first book published. If I had, maybe I would have set a goal that was more realistic, like becoming pope or the host of
Jeopardy!
Last summer, when I got word from my agent, Laura Gross, that Sourcebooks had accepted
Lies
, I could hardly believe it. When I told my wife Elizabeth, she said, “It’s like you’ve been pregnant for twenty years.” It’s great to finally be published, but in retrospect, I spent too much time letting the desire to be published distract me from the simple joy of writing.

9.
Did
you
get
discouraged
by
all
those
rejections?

Yes, very much at times. The whole process feels very personal. People are telling you your work isn’t good enough to make the cut. There were several periods of four or five months when I hardly wrote a word, but I kept going back to it. I went to a reading by an author whose novel was rejected something like forty times before it ended up selling a gazillion copies. At the reading someone in the audience asked him how he could explain this, and he said, “The cream always rises to the top.” His book is wonderful, but I disagree with his response. I think there are hundreds if not thousands of fine novels languishing in drawers because the people who wrote them simply gave up.

10.
That’s one good piece of advice for aspiring writers:
Never give up.
Anything else?

The only thing
any
writer can do is write the next line. You don’t have to escape to a cabin in the woods for three weeks to get something done. If you’re lucky enough to have that opportunity, sure, go for it. You may get an entire short story written or the first chapter of a novel. But when you come back to your everyday life, you have to find a way to keep it going. The trick is to let the story take hold of you. You can write the next line when you’re out jogging or standing at the deli counter in the supermarket. Actually, once you get going, the hard part is trying to find a way to leave the story behind and join the real world from time to time. People get annoyed when you’re having dinner with them and you’ve got that faraway look in your eyes. They want you to pass the salad dressing while you’re sitting there wondering if your heroine should tell her husband about the money she found hidden in the basement.

11.
Is
that
what
you
love
about
writing, getting caught up in a story?

Absolutely. I love it when the characters start talking to me. My wife thinks that is slightly crazy, the idea that there are imaginary people floating around out there telling me all sorts of stuff. But that’s what happens. Of course, half the time the characters are mumbling, so I can’t really hear them. Other times the things they say or do are so trite and predictable that I have to slap them around and demand something else. But that’s all part of the process. A wise person, I wish I could remember who, once said, “Writer’s write to find out what they didn’t know they know.” That’s a great description of what is exciting about being a writer—allowing your mind to take you places you never thought you’d go. Some of those places can be pretty scary or very hard to get to, but the best writers find a way to dig down and take us on that journey with them.

12.
How
do
you
know
when
a
story
is
finished?

Andre Dubus used to say that a story is never really finished, it’s just abandoned. That’s not quite true for me, but what does happen is that sometimes I think a story is finished, then I let it sit for a while, and when I go back to it, I find there are changes I want to make.

13.
Let’s talk about
Lies You Wanted to Hear.
What inspired you to write this story?

Around 1998, there was a front-page article in the
Boston
Globe
about a man who was arrested for kidnapping his children eighteen years before. He’d been turned in by a lawyer who found out his secret and was hoping to collect a reward. The kidnapper had two daughters who were accomplished young women in their early twenties, and they stood behind him completely. They refused to even meet with their mother—who had become an academic research scientist—unless she agreed not to press any charges against him. According to the newspaper coverage, the man had difficulty telling the truth and lived off the money that came from a succession of rich wives, but he appeared to be a great father to his daughters. I let the story marinate for about a year before trying to turn it into a novel. When I began writing, I started with the premise that both the kidnapper and the mother who loses her children were essentially good people. The story didn’t have much appeal to me if either of them were a monster. Beyond that, I always knew that in my novel I wanted it to be one of the children who discovered the secret of their kidnapping. I can’t say why I felt this so strongly, but it obviously adds another dimension to the story that is missing from the original. I wrote about sixty pages before I lost interest. Ten years later the story started speaking to me again. Even though I’d kept a file folder with all the old newspaper articles from the true-life case, I decided not to reread them until I had finished writing the novel. I didn’t want the facts of the true story to interfere with my imagination.

14.
How
did
you
come
up
with
the
idea
of
the
alternating
chapters
for
Matt
and
Lucy?

My goal was to let both characters have their say and see how readers responded to them. In the first draft, I wrote in the third person, limited perspective. In the second draft, I decided to try first person with the hope that it would force me to look at my characters more deeply. That turned out to be exactly what happened, especially when they began to explain to the reader why they did what they did.

15.
Is
there
one
character
in
the
novel
you
feel
most
closely
connected
to?