A Field Guide to Deception (34 page)

“An other,” Claire said, “still keeps it from being like mine.”

The mother turned to Liv when Claire said this, but the father regarded her, his fingers rubbing at his beard as though it were unexpected.

Liv and Claire cleared the dishes, filled the dishwasher, while the parents entertained Simon. Delighted with them, Simon filled the house with squeals and giggles.

“What were the fights about?” Claire asked.

“Girls.”

“So early?”

“From the beginning.”

Claire considered this. “And your parents?”

“They've known for so long, I can't remember a time when they didn't.”

In the kitchen, a motif of yellow roses, Claire touched the wallpaper, this house made her nostalgic: for the child, Liv, and something unspoiled in herself. Liv's hands, then, at her waist, and Claire closed her eyes. Listened to the murmur as Liv held her mouth against Claire's throat, intoxicated—two ungovernable girls alone in the parents' kitchen—and yes, transported.

The tree had to have grown in the living room. No one could have squeezed such a behemoth through a door or window.

“This is the biggest Christmas tree,” Liv said, “that I have ever seen.”

Uninterested by the lights, ornaments, or scale of the evergreen, Simon played with a set of old wooden trains on the floor by the nutcrackers.

“I've been reading to him,” Liv's mother said.

“Has he read to you?” Liv asked.

The parents both looked at Simon.

“Simon, do you want to read a book?” Claire asked.

“No, no, thank you.”

“Just this one about trains?” Claire asked.

He hopped up from the floor, and climbed into her lap. She turned the pages while he read. The parents, vigilant, incredulous, the mother whispering, “But he can't have known this story, Olivia. This is one of your books.” As though this were a magic trick, amazing, but staged. Afterward, she brought Simon into her lap, and had him read aloud from the pile of books beside her.

Claire scrutinized the ornaments while the parents carried Simon to bed, and tucked him in. A strange house, and strangers, but he kissed her and Liv goodnight, and wandered away from them willingly.

“What are you parents' names?”

“Dennis and Susan.”

“Great, now I can stop thinking of them as ‘the parents.'”

“I have this sense that they like Simon.”

“It's possible,” Claire said.

“He's certainly at his best. I thought my mother would go into shock when he sounded out
expedition
.”

“He's a faker. His story at home—
Jane's Perilous Expedition—
is an old standard. But he is in rare form, same as you. How does she seem to you?”

“It's hard to say. She looks better, more energetic, but she might just be high on Simon.”

“Are they winding down?” Claire asked.

“Oh yes. And you? Do you want to go out?”

Claire shook her head, astonished that it had never occurred to her that they might escape for a few hours on their own.

“Are you sure? For a drink, or some music?”

“Shouldn't we all be on our best behavior?”

“What does that mean, no fun? I wasn't raised by Congregationalists,
my folks are cool with us going out.”

“No,” Claire said. “Tomorrow night, maybe. I think I'm done for the night as well.”

“Ready for your own bed in your own room?”

“Are they light sleepers?”

“The lightest.”

“Fun.”

Liv turned off the lights on the tree, and wandered through the main floor, checking that the doors were locked, and the rest of the lights off. In the darkened entryway, Claire waited for her. Standing there, she could see it, Liv at seventeen, dropping from her bedroom window to the grass below, to meet some girl in some park, to huddle among the trees, or in a car, both of their hearts unstable.

“Your boy,” Susan said from the landing above Claire, “is precious.”

Claire had started, and gasped. She cleared her throat, willed herself not to laugh. “Thank you.”

“Has Liv explained to you about the rooms?”

“No,” Claire said. “She hasn't.”

“My great aunt played poker. She was incorrigible, lied just to hear herself talking. Every one of her stories ended with a close friend of hers getting shot. I admired her.” Wood on the landing shifted with her weight. Claire closed her eyes a moment to listen to the house—the fan blew air from the furnace, shifted the pale curtains in the room beyond them. “She said the worst thing a host could do was deny any guest the right to a room of her own.”

Claire opened her eyes, peered into the dark. She could see Susan's teeth, a glare from her eyes.

“So I always give each guest her own room, and allow her to choose.” She'd started back up the stairs when she laughed. “Good night, girls.”

“Asshole,” Claire whispered to Liv.

“Told you I wasn't raised by Congregationalists.”

“Your mom's great aunt had a lover.”

“Several.”

“How many girls have you brought home?”

“Dozens.”

“Liar,” Claire said.

“Come to bed.”

“Say you're a liar.”

“I am.”

Liv took two steps and looked back, a negative: her shorn hair, her luminous eyes; her neck, her arm on the banister, her forehead; light reduced her to fractions.

“Wait for me,” Claire said, thinking of boot prints in the grass, a girl checking her watch, anxious that it might not happen.

Thirty-one

Cancer mom and other bedtime stories

Liv followed the light downstairs. In the rocker, her mother slept with her head bowed. On the glass table at her right, potpourri and an African violet, a blue-jean quilt across her lap. Unsure whether waking her or leaving her would be crueler, Liv hesitated, and her mother woke.

“You're here,” her mother said.

Liv stepped forward.

“I thought I couldn't sleep,” her mother said.

“I'll help you back upstairs.”

“No. Maybe the couch.”

Liv grabbed the folded fleece blanket from the back of the couch, attempted to swaddle her mother before she'd even managed to lie down. Cold, and imperiously white, this had always been Liv's least favorite room. Stark and sterile, vaguely medicinal; she sensed that now more than ever, tucking the blue-jean quilt around her mother.

“Well, this is snug. You'll get the light?”

“I will,” Liv said. “Do you need anything to drink?”

“I'm fine. I should sleep, I think. And if I don't, I'm already downstairs.”

“You look good,” Liv said, perched on the edge of the sofa. She wanted to touch her mother's face, but resisted.

“Yes, cancer's made me glamorous.”

Liv reached out, rested her hand on her mother's forehead, brushed her fingers over her eyes. Touched her as though she were Simon.

“You don't have cancer anymore.”

“Or my breasts.”

After the scare, Liv thought. After the scare is worse. You think you're free, that you have survived the worst of it. Your mother's anger is harder than her cancer.

“I've never met a Simon before.”

“I hadn't either.”

“She could be your double.”

“My stand-in for my film career?”

“Yes, precisely. She's the sort of woman—capable—a consummate woman, isn't she? Adept at everything, the sort of person the world seems to be generous with.”

Liv smoothed her mother's eyebrows, followed the course of her cheekbones.

“I've always envied,” her mother said, “women like that: powerful.”

“Sleep,” Liv whispered.

“And you with a child, Olivia. You with a child was worth staying alive for.”

Her breathing deepened, her eyelids fluttered, but Liv kept tracing her mother's face. Kept thinking the word,
Indelible
.

Thirty-two

Naps with Chinese dinosaurs

Almost before anyone else sat down, the bacon had been consumed; Susan had laughed at the empty dish, patted Simon's head, and made more. Now he ate pancake shapes at the table with huckleberry syrup and slabs of butter. Liv and Dennis were taking Simon to the OMSI exhibit of China's Ancient Giants—they'd offered to take him to the zoo to ride the train, but he'd elected the dinosaur exhibit instead. They'd take the convertible, despite the month, just for the adventure of it.

Simon had imagined a car that changed—that converted—into a robot, and so, standing in the garage looking at the blue Dodge, was disappointed. Once they pulled onto the road, he freaked completely. He worried that his hat would sail away, that he'd be blown out, that someone could grab him and he'd be lost.

Claire had stayed with Susan to help bake pies, and de-bone the turkey. Susan had advocated that she was perfectly capable of handling all the prep for dinner on her own, but she had been overruled by the others, and been awarded her assistant by coup.

In the backyard, with the recycling, Claire stood admiring the fence, the tidy garden area, the lawn furniture. Dressed in a sweater, she found the Portland morning bearable, and like most visits, clear-skied. She heard the door open behind her, and said, “The weather always behaves when I visit.”

“Then you should come more often,” Susan said. “In the spring, Simon would see the zoo at its best.”

She carried two garbage bags, and Claire relieved her of them. “Dennis
loves this yard. This summer, I slept in the hammock while he weeded, and watered, and mowed. Laziest summer I've had in decades.”

In the kitchen, Claire peeled and cored apples, zested lemons, chopped anything laid before her. They listened to Hank Williams. Susan told stories of her own children when they were small. Seemed, now, grateful they were grown.

“Olivia was a great contrarian: everything was its opposite. ‘Close the door' meant ‘open it' and ‘no thanks' meant ‘absolutely' and I spent years interpreting every sentence. Later, when she was in school, and bored, I wondered if she needed complication in order to thrive. You know what I mean? Simple would never be enough for Olivia. I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing, but I think it's true.

“She brought home her first girlfriend for Thanksgiving dinner when she was fifteen. I'd never actually considered the possibility, but in comes this chatterbox, and Olivia looking at her like she's Helen, and I thought, ‘well, yes, I see that alright.'