A Field Guide to Deception (25 page)

“Are you limping?” Drake asked.

“I hate wallboard.”

“I've just sneaked up there. It looks amazing, like the skeleton of a room.”

“It's tearing along, that's certain. I'll need to run to Home Depot this afternoon for materials.”

“How's the plumber doing? I can't really estimate.”

“He's a focused guy.” And a dick. He'd told Liv that she looked like a boy, that it was a shame because she could be pretty. “If I saw you on the street with a guy,” he'd said, “I'd think you were a fag.”

“What kind of answer is that?” Drake asked.

“He's doing the work.”

“You don't like him,” Drake said, amused. She wore a bandana this morning; her bangs pulled back, her face pale, eyes sunken.

“He's OK.”

“You should have been a diplomat. The disapproval barely registers.”

“Not barely enough.”

Drake laughed, and pulled her knees up to her chest.

“Am I allowed,” Liv asked, “to ask about the date?”

“Yes, you may. It was fun. She looked exhausted by nine, but it was fun.”

“Bakery people drop early.”

“Hmm. Next time we'll try brunch.”

At Benny's Pizzaria, the servers were antiheroes, prone to ignoring the clientele, and scoffing. Tucked into a baked wheat calzone with spinach, roasted garlic, goat cheese and peppers, Liv drank a beer, rubbed at her knees, felt old. Claire had checked back in. She'd yanked Simon from daycare, and suddenly reappeared in their lives, passionate and garrulous. Now she made breakfast—bacon and eggs, or pancakes with berries, cream cheese crepes, or hot oatmeal cereal—every morning. And played with them both in the evenings: board games, coloring books, puzzles, an easel with paints, and, of course, trains.

These past months, Liv's singular desire—for Claire to engage—had finally transpired, and now Liv found herself wandering off, her mind distracted, her conversation stifled. And she could not blame Claire. Liv knew her own disaffection was not revenge, nothing so petty and calculated. Not boredom either, but something more insidious, something more troubling: Liv was frightened. Frightened to enmesh herself with this woman. Frightened to care for this woman more than she already did. Frightened that any more depth of feeling would result in an even harsher abandonment the next time that Claire left them.

Abandoned. Liv had thought that word a dozen times in the last weeks. Each time it appeared in her head, she was ashamed of herself.
A little child left in the dark, is that how she imagined herself? When had she become so fucking sad?

Bitter, the wind blew like a wound to the bones. In her truck, she pumped the accelerator several times before attempting to turn the engine over. Lighting a cigarette, she pulled down a side street and headed toward the bluff. It was nearly four in the afternoon, the light dim, the air smelled of snow.

Bailey answered the door, phone to her ear, and waved Liv inside. “No,” she said. “I do understand what you're saying. Yeah. Absolutely. No, I hear you. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.” She scowled at Liv, shook her head. “Really, Mom, I do get what you're saying. Really. Right. I know it's outrageous. Yes. I agree with you. Whatever you decide is fine with me. Just let me know. Right. Mom, I have to go. Sure. You just let me know. OK. Bye bye.”

She threw the phone at the couch. “Oh my fucking god. I don't even know if she's messing with me. It's like she has Alzheimer's. I'm having the same conversation with her all week like fucking leftovers.”

“About?”

“Oh god, it's so tedious it doesn't even bear repeating. And I should know. I've witnessed every reprise. What's going on with you? Why aren't you at work?”

“I want to go for a walk. You feel like a walk?”

Bailey stared at her. “You want to go for a walk right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Outside?”

“On the bluff. We can hike the High Drive trails.”

“It's almost dark,” Bailey said. “And it's frigid. And windy.”

“All of this is true.”

“God, don't make me feel bad. OK, let me grab my headlamp, and my hiking boots, and my glove warmers, and a thermos of hot chocolate. Yes, brilliant, Liv, you make hot chocolate while I get ready.”

Twenty minutes later—Bailey's headlamp blinding Liv if they walked abreast—they picked up the High Drive trailhead two blocks from Bailey's house. A man and woman ran past with two Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

“Why aren't we running? You're so timid, Liv.”

“Old. Today I'm old.”

“Don't worry, tomorrow you'll be twenty-eight again. Are those raccoons?” Liv followed the cast of Bailey's lamp and saw two pairs of eyes by a pine tree. One pair a couple of feet off the ground, the other four feet higher. Bailey, pulling Liv's jacket, dragged her several paces along the trail. “They freak me out with their little hands.”

Liv laughed. She could hear their footsteps, their breathing, the wind in the foliage, a train whistle in the distance.

“So, Julia Drake,” Bailey said. “The word voluptuous was made for that woman.”

“She told me you two had a good time.”

“I almost nodded off during dinner, but that wasn't her fault. Look, I'm sorry about that drive after Zola. I'm sorry I said that wicked shit to you. I don't have any excuse, really. I misinterpreted everything.”

“Bailey, I—” Liv stopped at the edge of the bluff, and stared down into Vinegar Flats. In the darkness, Latah Creek flickered as it meandered through the gully below the train track. She could see the industrial greenhouses, imagined the hum of them.
I don't know how to do this.
She was a lousy storyteller. The girl on a bridge poised with a knife, while in a fifth-floor apartment, another girl cried, ice at the edges of the windowpanes. Each girl afterward a sip of the same drink, just a sip. Could you be present and permanent all at once? “I want to be better at this.”

Bailey turned off her headlamp. She stood beside Liv in the darkness, facing the valley. “Better at what?”

“I don't want to be vulnerable anymore.”

“It doesn't work that way.”

“I just want to know how it ends.”

“Then what?”

“Then,” Liv said, “I'll stop worrying about it.”

“Maybe you're having withdrawals.”

“Don't be an ass, Bailey. This isn't about those girls, it's about Claire.”

“Because Claire is different?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Because I love her.
“She just is.”

“Tell me.”

I would build her cities.
“Because she's hard, complicated—and Simon. I have to work. She's not a head on a platter, you know?”

“She's not a gift?”

“I'm not talking about gifts.” Liv strained her neck backward and glared at the sky. It had begun to snow. Silently, the flakes fell, fat and drifting, the night around them silent, pregnant. The head on the platter had been a sacrifice, a demonstration of power, of ruthlessness. Claire wasn't a demonstration of anything.

“I can't explain. She's a challenge. She has worth—to me—and I don't know if that's because I value her, or because she's valuable—but either way, I know it's true.”

“How,” Bailey asked, “will it help to know how it ends?”

“I want to know the worst thing that will ever happen to us.”

“Wait and see.”

Liv had more to say, but no way to communicate it. She and Claire were off by a degree, never in the same location at the same time. And patience, patience stifled her. Couldn't love be effortless too?

The snow fell around them in flurries, not sticking yet, but insulating all noise. They walked along the trail, the snow hitting rocks and ruts and wetting their faces. Ahead of her, Bailey began laughing, her face turned into the snow, her cap pulled off so that the snow caught in her hair. The sky opened onto them, rendered the world elemental and precious, and Liv and Bailey were the only witnesses, the only ones who knew.

Claire sliced Simon's grilled cheese into quarters and cut off the crust. He watched Bailey work while he ate, as though he were memorizing her technique. The lunch rush had dwindled and now Bailey plated the final order.

“Why don't the four of us have drinks on Saturday?” Bailey said.

Claire, still beside Simon, her knife tapping lightly against the counter, considered. She was curious about Drake. She couldn't name the last time she and Liv had been out together like adults. “Why not?”

“Exactly.”

“Where?” Claire asked.

“Mizuna at eight?”

“Works for me. I'll tell Liv.”

The plumber was a fuck. Without merit, tact, or skill. He kept running outside to take calls. As he came back up the attic stairs now, Liv asked, “How much longer, do you figure?”

“Another few days.”

“It's done tomorrow, at bid, or I get someone else.”

He chuckled. “Tough, huh?”

“It's done tomorrow.”

“That could be.”

She'd turned, and walked back to the floor sander. The floorboards were fir, and not too disreputable. He followed her. His hands were large blocks. Liv ignored him.

“Hey,” he said.

“You can be done now too.”

“I don't need your fucking permission. I'm done when I say.”

“No,” Liv said. “You're done now. My client's not paying for your temper tantrum.”

“What'd you say?”

“Pack your tools and go.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Her name's Liv Tannen,” Drake said from the staircase. “Forgive me, I thought you'd been introduced. Liv's the builder on this project.”

His face—swollen and red—trembled around his eyes.

“Mr. Rory is packing up his tools,” Liv said to Drake. “His work on this project has come to an end.”

Drake climbed the last stairs to the attic. “Thank you, Mr. Rory.”

He wavered in the doorway, then turned and raged about the bathroom, muttering invectives. Drake stood nearby, silent, as they waited him out.