One Last Lie (10 page)

*

And it was perfect, until tonight. Now she’d seen what real money could buy — space, land, beauty, and room to breathe. The trip to Connecticut opened her eyes in so many ways, creating a catalyst for change and the need for a different life. The apartment that once seemed luxurious was now a prison cell; a place to escape from as soon as possible. She knew she could make it happen, she was just uncertain about the timing.

By the time she reached the second floor landing, a wave of exhaustion came over her. She plopped down on the top step to rest for a few minutes before climbing to the third floor. Looking over the expanse of the stairway, she breathed deeply, trying to ignore the smell of meat and aged plaster, imagining herself in a house like Philip’s. Every morning, coffee in hand, she’d stroll through the huge French doors onto the teak deck, breathing in the fresh New England air, watching baby bunnies follow their mother into a row of perfectly landscaped bushes.

She propped her head on her hands and stared into the empty space before her, seeing nothing but the French doors — doors that would be her entrance into a world she deserved to be part of, but had always been denied. She decided she’d keep the doors in her mind’s eye whenever she climbed these foul stone steps or unlock her creaky apartment door, or puttered in her midget-sized kitchen. Just as she’d visualized herself as thin, minute-to-minute, day after day, she’d envision those doors as her own: the scent of their cherry stain, the strength of their wood, the ease of their glide. She knew, then and there, at that moment, it was time to shake the fishbowl from the counter and let it smash on the floor.

“Psssst!” The sound jolted her; her thoughts instantly evaporating into thin air. “Angie… what the hell? What’s wrong?”

Angela turned to see June peeking through her partially opened door.

Forcing strength back into her legs, Angela stood, dragged herself toward June, and leaned against the wall next to her apartment.

“Hey,” Angela said, still foggy from the mass of thoughts just knocked from her head. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just beat.”

June opened the door wider and checked the hallway to see if anyone was lurking. Angela looked her up and down, shaking her head. June wore the same plaid, flannel bathrobe they’d been arguing over for years. Angela begged her to throw it out. “If these are the type of clothes you
think
you deserve,” she’d said countless times, “they’re the only type of clothes you’ll ever have.” June would agree, promise to discard the robe, and show up months later wrapped within its tatters.

“That thing is like a ragged security blanket… the kind of crap babies don’t give up until they’re teenagers,” Angela said, pointing to June’s robe. “No matter how tired it gets, even if it’s a tiny shred, you won’t let it go. How many times do I have to tell you, June, if…”

“I know,” June interrupted. “If I think this is all I deserve, it’s all I’ll ever have.” She tightened the shredded belt around her thin waist. “Can you let me have one vice, Angie?” Stepping further into the hallway, she pointed to the landing. “At least I’m not sitting in the middle of a hall like some vagrant, staring into space at twelve thirty at night.” She leaned her back against the door jam, bunched up the dirty blonde, straw-like hair dropping onto her shoulders, and tucked the wad into the collar of her robe. “And what the hell is with that boyfriend of yours? I had to step over him to get into the building. I thought you two were done.”

Angela bit her bottom lip. “We
are
done.” She thought about his hands, his fingers, and the amazing pleasure he’d just helped her experience. “Almost.” She smiled.

June crossed her arms and wiped the remaining strings of hair from her eyes. “Yeah. That’s the way it always is with you two.” She rolled her eyes. “More importantly, what happened in Connecticut tonight? You wanna come in and tell me about? What did he say? Is he going to do it? Did you…”

Angela placed her index finger on June’s lips. “Shhhh. Too many questions. And it’s way too late. I’ll see you at work in the morning and tell you all about it.”

June stamped her foot like a toddler. “Damn it, Angie. I’ve been waiting all night to hear about it. I couldn’t sleep. And now you’re just going to go to bed? That’s not fair.”

Angela clomped toward the stairs and giggled. “Life’s not fair, my friend.” She stopped short and turned around. “But I will tell you one thing that might help settle you in for the night.”

“What?” June waited with her mouth hanging open.

“If I were you, I’d get on the Internet and start checking out the responsibilities of being a godmother… Aunt June.”

With that, she twirled around and walked down the hallway to the stairs, not looking back or waiting for a response. She had a long night of planning and fantasizing ahead of her and didn’t want to waste her remaining strength on getting into the details with June. Soon enough she’d need June’s help, and that would be the time for nitty-gritty. But for tonight, she’d keep things as they were, leaving June with a reason to believe that sometime in the near future there’d be some kind of meaning in her life — a meaning she’d never find on her own.

8

June tightened the flannel belt around her waist, stopping right before her pain threshold. She slammed the door shut, staggered to the sofa, and fell into it, slouching deep into the horizontal crevasse separating the top velour cushions from the bottom. She stared at the pill bottles on the coffee table in front of her and winced as they appeared to stare back, challenging her to a battle of wills. She turned away, knowing if there was such a battle, she’d lose.

At times like this, June missed her home so intensely she’d hug herself and imagine her mother’s arms wrapped around her. She closed her eyes and tried to recreate her favorite memory: sitting on the patio of their small country house in Wrightsville, the sweet smell of Georgia Cherokee Rose wafting through the humidity as they sipped ice cold glasses of sweet tea. In separate rockers, only inches apart, she and Momma swayed in unison, the only sound the hum of the ceiling fan, its blades pushing through the dense, stagnant air.

Even more than their conversation, she missed the shared silence; the long hot days on the patio gazing into the depths of the Wisteria vines while thinking isolated thoughts; Saturday nights in the kitchen, both of them too busy baking cakes for the next day’s Church gathering to utter any word other than the occasional “thank you” or “excuse me”; early mornings with rain pattering on the tin roof, both of them lying in their rooms, knowing the other was awake and they’d soon meet in the sitting room for morning coffee.

The things she missed so passionately were also what drove her to leave and head for New York. Back then, the silence grated on her — the grinding of repressed emotions struggling to break free, pushed back by guilt, fear, and insecurity.

Maybe it was her brittle hair or tiny nose. Maybe it was her oversized teeth that never grew completely together. Whatever the reason, she’d spent her life trying to be invisible, which was hard to do in a small town like Wrightsville. And that’s when the light bulb went on: What better place to get lost than the most populated city in the country?

And now, almost three years later, June slumped on the sofa staring down the pill bottles, wondering if she should swallow all of them and then dial 911. That would show Angela. She stretched her leg and gently placed her foot on the glass coffee table, her sciatica making its entrance as expected, an inseparable companion to anxiety and sleeplessness.

Like a monkey, she grabbed the amber vial of Vicodin with her toes and dropped it into her lap. She shook it and felt a sense of relief, the weight telling her she had enough to get through another few days. Twisting the label-less vial with her fingers, she examined her palm through the other side. This was the bottle Angela gave her a few weeks earlier, along with the unchanged dialogue that accompanied every delivery.

“I’m here for you,” Angela had said, holding the vial up to June’s face and shaking the Vicodin inside with her thumb and forefinger. “As you are for me, right?”

June nodded, wanting nothing more than a pill to cool the hot poker in her lower back that had been stabbing at her for two days. “Definitely,” she said, almost a whisper. “Whatever you need.”

With the door closed, they stood in the storage closet on the seventh floor of the hospital, the buzzing fluorescent ceiling lights sending a chill down the back of June’s neck. She was about to grab the pills from Angela when she noticed the slightest change in her friend’s expression, a combination of kindness and malevolence that made her uncertain what her next move should be. She froze, waiting for Angela to say something.

“That’s great to know,” Angela finally replied, handing June the vial. “Because there’s something coming up I might need your help with.” Angela turned and slowly moved toward the door. She turned back to June, the shadow cast from the lights above making her eyes look frightfully black. “I’m glad we became friends, June. I really am.” Another smile. “And please say hi to your mom the next time you speak with her.”

Still nodding, June pushed the vial into the pocket of her scrubs, regretting the pain in her back, her move up north, and the unspoken deal she’d just made.

*

A few months later, on a frigid February night, ten inch icicles hung from the fire escape ladder and glistened sparkles of light into June’s living room window.

Angela sat close beside her on the sofa, bundled up in an afghan blanket. Without warning, she swiped a pill vial off the coffee table.

“Remember that day in the storage room, June? The day we kind of made an oath to help each other?”

June nodded, a twinge of panic stirring in her groin. Since that day, Angela had been supplying her with the medication she needed, never saying a word about where it came from. The automated dispenser at work made it virtually impossible for her to be stealing meds from the hospital. In fact, the nursing staff continually griped about the complexity of security: passwords, PIN numbers, med codes. So unless Angela was a technological genius, she had to be getting the pills from outside the hospital. June finally decided her source was one of the slimy characters she’d seen Angela bring to her apartment, drunk and fumbling up the stairs, one hand on the banister and the other up her skirt. This conclusion only added to June’s anxiety. She worried that one day she’d take a pill without any potency, or worse, swallow a pill laced with a lethal substance.

And now, with Angela sitting so close to her, a different kind of anxiety arose. Somewhere inside she knew Angela wasn’t paying attention to the television and the topic of conversation was about to turn to how she would pay for her addiction.

“I’ve been thinking.” Angela hit the remote’s mute button without taking her eyes of the screen.

“Uh oh.” June laughed nervously, shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth. She wrapped her robe more tightly around her, grabbed the crocheted blanket lying on top of the sofa, and threw it over her legs, the cold suddenly penetrating her thin bones. She had a sudden thought of her mother, wondering what Mom was doing at that moment: baking pies, reading a book by the wood burning stove? Was she thinking of June as June so often thought of her? Waiting for the words to come out of Angela’s mouth, June wanted nothing more than to once again share that comforting silence with her mother.

“I’ve been thinking about having a baby.” Angela turned to June. “And I need your help.”

June took the warm Budweiser from the side table and slugged a mouthful. The scratching effervescence felt good going down.

“I might not be a woman of the world, Angie, but I do know you need a
man
to help you have a baby.” She looked down to her lap. “I’m not equipped to help you with something like that,” she said, giggling at her own joke.

Angela’s change of expression caused a sharp tremble deep within June’s solar plexus. It was as though another face appeared on Angela’s body: a countenance with narrow, beady eyes, a bulb-shaped protuberance of a nose, a slit for a mouth, and fat, red cheeks. June wondered if this was what Angela looked like before she lost weight. Although the face frightened her, for a moment she felt a stab of relief that Angela too had been homely most of her life. For the first time since they met, June felt as though they were on an even playing field.

“You stupid shit!” Angela spewed.

June envisioned flames flaring from Angela’s nostrils. She curled the blanket deeper into her fists. The playing field was no longer even.

“Do you think this is a fucking joke? Is my life a fucking joke to you?” Angela reached behind her head and seized a pill bottle from the built-in bookshelf. Her scowl turned more threatening as she rattled the vial with a punishing shake.

“After all I’ve done for you, this is the God damn thanks I get?” She looked at the bottle in her hand. “One word to hospital security and they’ll take you out in handcuffs. You know that, right? And don’t think you can blame anything on me. My tracks are covered. I’ve made sure of that, you little shit.”

June’s face froze. It was just a joke, for God’s sake, and now her job was being threatened. She couldn’t bring herself to look up again and see the anger on Angela’s face. But she didn’t need to. She heard the fury in Angela’s breathing, like a bull in the ring, stamping its hoof and puffing out air through oversized nostrils. Something wasn’t right here. Angela was like a time bomb on the verge of exploding and June was sitting directly in her path. Not a good place to be.

She picked at the label on the beer bottle with her thumbnail, her thoughts fleeing to her bathroom medicine cabinet and her Klonopin on the top shelf. She tried not to take those too often, letting a Xanax, or two, or three, get her through an episode. Tonight she’d need something a lot stronger to keep her anxiety at bay.