A Field Guide to Deception (7 page)

When Claire put him to bed, he noticed the tent had only two sleeping bags.

“Three,” he told his mother.

“Three what?”

“We need three of them,” he said, anxious, pointing at the bags.

“Honey, Liv doesn't want to squeeze in here with us.”

“Three.” He was crying now. “We need three.”

“But it's so small,” Claire said, pointing to the walls of the tent. “We'd be sleeping on top of one another.”

“Three,” he cried again. Repeating the word in a rapid wail.

“Simon,” his mother said, almost angry. “Stop it this instant, or you'll sleep indoors.”

He went on crying, and she left him to it. At the ceramic fireplace, Liv had heard everything. Claire's face burned, and her skin felt too tight, but she walked toward the deck as though it didn't cost her anything to breathe, to walk, to ask, in as even a voice as she could manage, “Do you want a beer?”

Behind her, Simon's crying stopped abruptly. Then he shouted Liv's name and wailed on.

“Jesus,” Claire murmured. There was nowhere to go to escape this woman, this tether Claire felt taut between them. She couldn't look at Liv, couldn't bear to know what she'd see in her expression. If it would be something besides desire, something incredulous or bored or reluctant. Claire needed more time. A drink, and more time, and then maybe she could toss off some nonchalant proposal. Feel like squeezing into a two-man tent with a little kid who thrashes, and a woman who grinds her teeth? If you think just standing here is awkward, how about we all pile into a tent? “Do you want a beer?” she asked again.

“No,” Liv said. Her voice wrong, the word jagged.

“No?” Claire repeated, not understanding. Liv left through the scrub, the stalks grabbing at her bare legs. Claire thought to call her back, but couldn't somehow, and stood instead beside the unlit kindling, her body as still as the ceramic fireplace, as still as Simon now in the tent, and then, the truck kicking gravel.

“Wait,” the girl said, and leaned over Liv to pull something from her glove compartment. “I want you to wear this.”

Surprised, Liv almost asked where the girl was from. Reminded herself it didn't matter, and snapped the glove on.

In the bar again, she found another one, like a perky cheerleader, the girl's skirt flared at mid-thigh. Liv followed her to the bathroom and braced her against the sink to screw her.

From the street, Bailey's house looked asleep, the porch light off like everything else. Liv lit another cigarette and breathed. She felt worse now than before, sex a failing palliative. Go home, she thought. Give this up and go home. She saw Claire stepping from the tent, embarrassed. Embarrassed! The kid's scream approaching the frequency of bats, and Claire just pretended like nothing was happening, like they could have a beer, and chat, when Claire couldn't even look at her. Couldn't even say something like, “What a sweet kid,” or “How crazy
is that?” or “Do you want to sleep in the tent with us?” No. I don't want a beer. Liv slammed the door to the truck. No. That's not what I want. She turned the engine over. No. The roar of the truck drowned the word as she accelerated, and raced out of town, and across the bridges, and down the snaking road to the Douglas-firs. She ran along the gravel and dirt and grass and wood and stone to Claire's room. The bed empty, she threw open the door to Simon's room, where his, of course, was empty as well. Both of them asleep in the tent in the backyard: an adventure inspired by a new stove.

Claire could hear the saw even from the office. Though Liv had cordoned herself in the garage with the doors shut, the saw blade shrilled through the property. Another paragraph and then she would take Simon to swim at Comstock. For a moment, she considered an extended trip. Take the laptop and finish the book in Seattle at her parents' condo. That actually appealed to her less than her current living situation.

“Simon,” Claire called, still typing, “let's go to the park.”

They swam together and had ice-cream cones afterward. In no hurry to go home, Claire rented some movies, shopped for groceries, let the day slip away. Simon, fractious and hungry, made for an unpleasant companion.

Field guide to a particularly trying day: Hooray for the heroic mother of tantrum boy. Way to keep birthrates down.

On the drive back, Claire considered having a sitter come to give her a night off. And then what? Troll the bars like Liv? She realized with amusement that she was furious. Liv had left just in the middle of something—the beginning really—and she had torn away like some impetuous and spoiled teenager. Intolerable behavior that Claire found herself wishing she could describe to her aunt: she stalked off before I could explain anything. I'd actually decided to sleep with her, instead, she runs off without saying anything, and stays out all night, picking up god knows what. I don't know what to do with her.

To which her aunt would have replied what, exactly? Claire had no inkling. Just what you need, another destructive self-loather. In all probability, Dee would have laughed and said, This is getting good. Tell me more.

Claire put Simon to bed and walked out to the garage. During a break in the sawing, she knocked on the door and called for Liv. In a moment, goggles and gloves still on, sawdust light over her entire body, Liv poked her head out.

“We should talk,” Claire said.

Liv pushed the door wide and stood back. Stacked against the back of the garage by the riding mower were the finished pieces, and on the sawhorses, several long sheets still to be run through the table saw. She'd covered most of the garage with tarps to simplify cleanup.

Field guide to a completely mystifying courtship: if you don't get it, then you've got it.

Perched on the riding mower, Liv took off her gloves and pulled the goggles down around her neck. She wore a thin, white tank top and belted shorts. Her silence, Claire realized, made this more awkward.

Claire had prepared a speech, a sort of romantic declaration. It included a comparison between Liv's eyes and a certain unique mushroom. But right now, Claire couldn't remember the speech, not a word of it, not even the name of the mushroom shaded Liv's particular brown.

“Come here,” Claire said.

Liv came toward her without hesitating. Claire pulled the goggles over her head, and then brushed the sawdust from Liv's forehead, along her jaw, away from her lips. She slid Liv's tank top and bra down her torso, traced each tattoo. Topless now, fine sawdust over Claire as well, Liv remained motionless. Claire unfastened Liv's belt and let her shorts drop to her boots.

The booted knight! That was the mushroom. Brown rimmed with amber, like these eyes. Claire touched Liv's eyebrows. “You built this garage,” she whispered, as she pushed Liv backwards toward the shelves. “You made a place for me. Here. You made this place.” Claire pushed against Liv's pelvic bone and kissed her mouth. At first Liv
submitted, until finally, when Claire bit harder, Liv rent her shirt and bit back.

Claire wrote out the check to Liv and met her in the kitchen. On a chair beside the sink, Simon filled her plastic water bottles, while Liv packed oranges and a bagel in her day bag. Her father had left a voicemail on Liv's cell: her mother had breast cancer and was having two malignant lumps removed. Her surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning; he just wanted Liv to know. She'd been trying to reach them all morning, calling intermittently, but no one picked up at home or on her father's cell. She'd called her sister, and left messages there too.

“I have to go,” she'd told Claire, her face sallow, her eyes incapable of concentration. “A week, maybe less. I don't know.”

Claire handed her the check now, and picked Simon up. He clung to his mother, in that way Liv found magical and ancient and simian. Both faces drawn and strangely haggard as though the grief were theirs rather than Liv's. She kissed Simon, and looked at Claire, and fled from the kitchen.

Eight

Doppelganger

In the courtyard of the Mercury Café, a pudgy, inept fellow spun dance music, and groups of lawyers, drunk and argumentative, still in their court suits, lounged at tables. Amidst the myriad tables, sat two large contingents of lesbians, in their softball gear, emptying pitchers of beer. Back by the fire door, the gay boys stood with cigarettes. Claire wound through the tables, and along the wall where more girls leaned, and a kind of hiss had started, then finally inside the bar. Three lines for the bar, all of them long and surly, Claire chose the one that looked a little less teenybopper. A girl approached her almost instantly: “I was hoping you'd be here tonight.”

Claire stared at the girl, trying to place her, “How have you been?”

The girl looked like she might cry. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” She walked to a table by the jukebox and muttered something to the two girls sitting there. Claire ordered a gin and tonic, but the bartender wouldn't let her pay for it.

“Your drinks all night are covered,” he told her. “I'm not allowed to say who.”

Claire had picked the Mercury to be left alone. With just three chapters left, she'd phoned Agnes, Simon's favorite sitter, and asked if she were available Friday evening. Now, baffled, she moved through the tables, aware of being watched from every direction, and headed upstairs. She sat on a stool by the pool tables and sipped at her drink. It was stiff.

“Hi,” the girl said.

“Hi,” Claire answered.

“We should go.”

“I just got here.”

“The bathroom locks, remember?”

Claire sipped her drink. Despite her confusion, something fierce was stirring; she could feel its weight shift, almost like a fetus, inside her.

“I don't think so,” Claire said. The girl's face pinched and reddened. “Right. Gotcha. Enjoy your drink.” And then she, too, was gone.