Here We Lie. Paula DeBoard Treick

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СКАЧАТЬ of us in an actual bed, on an actual mattress, with actual sheets. For bringing drugs into a place whose official mission was to serve children, Marcus was charged with a felony. That fall, I served a Mabrey-imposed house arrest, only leaving my bedroom on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Mom brought me to a local senior center to serve out my sentence.

      One day that October, she slapped the Hartford Register in front of me, open to an article about an inmate that had been killed in a brawl. He was identified as Marcus Rodriguez, twenty, of Hartford, awaiting trial for felony drug sales. The article didn’t mention that he’d been a student at Capitol Community College, that he’d coordinated the new mural at the Hartford Arts Cooperative, that he’d had a kind smile, that he liked to talk after sex, that his girlfriend had sold him out.

      In November, Dad won the senate race by a landslide.

      * * *

      I spent most of that fall on my childhood bed in Holmes House, shifting from hysterical to catatonic like they were the only settings that had been programmed into me. Marcus was dead, and I was going to come out unscathed. Marcus was dead, and his death was directly related to me, set in motion by the kiss I’d given him that night at the slop sink, my hands soapy with water, as if a line could be drawn between the two, a simple dot to dot.

      Mom had spread the word that I was suffering from a bad case of mono, and from time to time get-well cards arrived from my classmates at Reardon. I completed my coursework that semester through independent study, moving zombie-like through worksheets and take-home tests.

      Once Mom found me on my bed, sobbing into a pillow. “What now?” she asked, as if I’d done some new horrible thing.

      I wiped away my tears, but my voice came out weak and blubbery. “He was so young.”

      Mom leaned close, and for a moment I thought she might do something to comfort me, like pat me on the shoulder or tell me it would be okay. Instead, she slapped me across the face. “You will snap out of this,” she ordered. “You’ll get on with your life and we will never speak of this again, do you understand?”

      She was true to her word; if Kat or MK knew anything about what I’d done, they never mentioned it me. Dad had already leased an apartment in Washington; after the election, that became his permanent residence, his stays at Holmes House brief and rare. Up until then, Dad had been a buffer between Mom and me, a mild-mannered negotiator. Now that he was gone, the silence stretched between us, too large to be breeched with a phone call.

      Once I wandered downstairs while Mom was hosting a meeting for the local branch of the League of Women Voters, pausing in the hallway as the women chatted and sipped tea from china that had been in the Holmes family for a hundred years. Hildy, our live-in domestic help, passed me with the tea service rattling faintly on a silver tray.

      “How is poor Lauren?” one of the women asked, and I started, hearing my name.

      Mom didn’t miss a beat. “We were so worried about her, but she’s been growing stronger every day. This virus just hit her hard, poor thing.”

      I leaned against the wall, listening to the women’s sympathetic murmurs as Mom reinvented my troubles—fevers and listlessness, loss of appetite, how devastated I’d been not to participate in more of the campaigning. “Lauren’s a strong girl, though,” Mom said. “She’ll be back to her old self in no time.”

      It was an amazing performance, award-worthy. Somehow, Mom had managed to erase the drugs in my backpack, the hours I’d spent in the police station, Marcus bleeding to death in the Hartford Correctional Center, the months I’d spent crying into my pillow. She’d reinvented me as a brave warrior, a dutiful daughter.

      She was so convincing, I almost believed it myself.

       OCTOBER 10, 2016

      Megan

      The alarm on my cell phone went off at 6:25, then again at 6:30 and, as a last call, at 6:35. Marimba—the world’s most hateful sound. Bobby’s side of the bed was empty, and when I entered the kitchen five minutes later, he was already draining his first cup of coffee and filling his thermos with the thirty-two ounces that would get him through the day.

      I stood in the doorway, yawning.

      “Well, if it isn’t the woman of my dreams,” Bobby said, grinning at my disheveled state. I was wearing one of his old UMass shirts, the decaying hem hanging to my knees.

      I pulled a face. “Save any for me?”

      Bobby gestured to a steaming cup on the end of the kitchen peninsula. The coffee was the exact murky shade of brown I liked, tempered with a bit of cream. He was dressed in everything but his shoes and his pants, which were draped over a bar stool, and I gave him a thumbs-up at the effect: a blue-and-white striped shirt, a tie with the tiny floating heads of the Beatles, plaid boxers, tan dress socks. Bobby was one of the cool teachers. Every high school had one—the teacher who donned the giant tiger mascot for pep rallies, who somehow managed to make class so interesting that his students forgot all about their smartphones for fifty minutes. If he had to, he would stand on his desk to get their attention, à la Dead Poets Society or challenge a student to a lunchtime dance-off as a form of motivational bribery. Once, I accused him of having literally no shame, and he seemed surprised by the idea. Why in the world should he have shame?

      I took a few fast sips, willing the caffeine to head directly to my brain. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

      He screwed the lid on his thermos, tightening it and holding it upside down, just to make sure, before setting it next to his briefcase. “Still slogging through the American Revolution.”

      “At least you’re finally done with those Puritans,” I commented.

      “Those prudes.” He grinned, giving me a slap on my decidedly round ass. I looked more and more like my mother each year, despite eating salads for lunch and pounding out the miles on a treadmill at Planet Fitness.

      The movement sent my coffee sloshing, and I cupped my hands around the rim to stop it from spilling. “It’s far too early to be so frisky.”

      “No such thing as too early.” Bobby was stepping into his pants, creased sharp from ironing the night before. “What’s your day like?”

      I grimaced. “Meetings from eight-thirty to noon, drop-ins after that.”

      “Do we have any plans for tonight? Because if we don’t—” he tucked and zipped and reached for his belt “—a few of my buddies are playing at this bar in Ballardville.”

      I shrugged. “Okay.”

      Bobby worked his feet into his shoes, bending to tie the laces. “They aren’t very good, or at least they weren’t the last time I heard them.”

      I smiled. “I’ll adjust my expectations accordingly.” Bobby was the exact opposite of me—he made friends easily and collected them everywhere he went: work, fast-pitch softball, hockey games. Two minutes after leaving a party, Bobby’s phone would ping with the notification of a friend request from someone he’d just met. Me—I kept things cooler, played my hand close to my chest. For the most part, other than those times I snooped from Bobby’s account, I avoided social media altogether, and my work friends were just that—friends at work.

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