The King of Lies (6 page)

I dug my nails into the white, rough meat of the cut ends and lifted. The boards rose easily. Beneath them, I found a safe. I should not have been surprised—my father was a secretive man—and yet I stared at it for a long time.

It was long and narrow, set between the floor joists. Its front was brushed metal, with a numeric keypad on the right side. I settled onto my knees, considering this new problem. Should I tell Mills? Not yet, I decided. Not without knowing its secrets.

So I tried to open it. I guessed at the combination. I tried every birthday in the family and every Social Security number, too. I tried the date Ezra passed the bar and the date he married my mother. I tried phone numbers, then I ran everything backward. I wasted half an hour staring at the safe and punching buttons; then I beat on it with my fists. I hit hard. I tore skin. It was that much like my father—hidden, silent, and unbreakable.

Eventually, I rocked away from the hard metal. I wedged the boards back into place and straightened the rug. I studied the scene critically. The lump under the rug remained, small but visible. I stepped on it. The creak was audible.

I went downstairs to the supply closet. On the top shelf I found the claw hammer and nails we used to hang pictures and diplomas. The nails were too small to be of use, but on the back of the shelf I found a half box of ten-penny nails—big, heavy brutes, like you’d use to nail a coffin shut. I grabbed a handful. Upstairs, I drove four of them into the loose boards, two in each one. The hammer was loud, and I swung it a few times too many, scarring the boards when I missed. Two of the nails went in straight and two bent as I drove them; I pounded them flat. When I replaced the rug there was no discernible lump. I stepped on the boards. Silence.

I put the hammer and extra nails on top of Ezra’s bookshelf and dropped wearily to the couch. It was deep. “Sleeps one, screws two,” Ezra once said, and I’d found that joke funny. Now it was just hard and cold, so I climbed wearily to my feet. Back in my car, I swiped at my face with a shirtsleeve. I was spent and shaky, and blamed it on the hangover; but deep down I wondered if I was coming apart. I turned on the air conditioner and laid my forehead against the hardness of the steering wheel. I breathed in and I breathed out, and after awhile I straightened. I needed to do something, needed to move; so I put the car in drive and pulled into thin traffic.

It was time to see Jean.

You could always hear the trains coming at her house. She lived in the poor part of town, next to the tracks, in a house that time had not spared. It was small, white, and dirty, with a covered front porch and green metal rockers like the blacks used to have when we were kids. A rusty oil tank leaned against the clapboards, and once-bright curtains stirred in the fitful breeze that passed by her open windows. I used to be welcome there. We’d drink beer in the shade of the porch and imagine what it must be like to grow up poor. It wasn’t hard; kudzu grew over the fence and there was a crack house a block away.

The trains came by about five times a day, so close that you felt the vibrations in your chest, deep and out of tune with your heart; and the whistle, when it blew, was so loud, you couldn’t hear a scream if it came from your own throat. The train gave the air a physical presence, so that if you spread your arms wide enough, it might push you down.

I got out of the car and looked back up the street. Tiny houses settled in silence, and a dog on a chain walked small circles in the dirt of the nearest yard. It’s a mean street, I thought, and crossed to my sister’s house. The steps sagged under me and there was dirt on the porch. A musty smell wafted from the open window, and I saw shadowed humps beyond. I knocked at the screen door, sensed movement, and heard a woman’s voice. “Yeah, yeah. Coming.”

The door opened and Alex Shiften blew smoke at me. She leaned against the jamb and looked beyond me. “It’s you,” she said.

Alex was the most purely physical person I’d ever met. She wore cutoffs and a tank top with no bra. She was long and lean, with wide shoulders and well-defined arms. She was intense, focused, and I thought she could probably kick my ass. I knew she’d like to try.

“Hello, Alex,” I said.

“What do you want?” she responded, finally meeting my eyes, cigarette dangling from her lips. Her hair was blond and cropped above broad cheekbones and narrow, tired-looking eyes. She had five rings in her right ear and wore thick black frames with no glass in them. Beyond naked antagonism, her eyes held nothing for me.

“I’m looking for Jean.”

“Yeah, no shit. But Jean’s gone.” She started to edge back inside, her hand eager on the door.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Alex answered. “Sometimes she just drives.”

“Where?”

She moved back onto the porch, crowding me backward. “I’m not her keeper. She comes and goes. When we want to be together, we are; otherwise, I don’t hassle her. That’s free advice.”

“Her car’s here,” I stated.

“She took mine.”

Looking at her, I wanted a cigarette, so I asked for one. “I’m all out,” she said, and my eyes fell to the pack wedged into her front pocket. Her eyes challenged me.

“You don’t much care for me, do you?” I asked.

Her voice didn’t change. “Nothing personal.”

“What, then?” Alex had been around for almost two years; I’d seen her maybe five times. Jean would not talk about her, not where she came from, not what she’d done with her twenty-odd years. All I knew was where they’d met, and that raised some serious questions.

She studied me and flicked her cigarette into the bare dirt yard. “You’re bad for Jean,” she said. “I won’t have it.”

Her words stunned me. “I’m bad for Jean?”

“That’s right.” She inched closer. “You remind Jean of bad times. With you around, she can’t let go. You drag her down.”

“That’s not true,” I said, and gestured around me, taking in everything, including Alex. “I remind her of happy times. Before all this. Jean needs me. I’m her past. Her family, damn it.”

“Jean doesn’t look at you and see happiness. She sees weakness. That’s what you bring to the table. She sees you and remembers all the crap that went down in the pile of bricks you grew up in. The years she spent choking on your father’s bullshit.” Alex stepped closer. She smelled of sweat and cigarettes. I backed away again, hating myself for it. She lowered her voice. “Women are worthless. Women are weak.”

I knew what she was doing and felt my throat tighten. It was Ezra’s voice. His words.

“Fucking and sucking,” she continued. “Isn’t that what he would say? Huh? Beyond housekeeping, women are good for two things. How do you think that made Jean feel? She was ten the first time she heard him say that. Ten years old, Work. A child.”

I couldn’t respond. He’d said that only once, to my knowledge, but once was enough. They are not words a child easily forgets.

“Do you agree with him, Work? Are you your daddy’s boy?” She paused and leaned into me. “Your father was a misogynistic bastard. You remind Jean of that, and of your mother; of how she took it and acted like Jean should, too.”

“Jean loved our mother,” I shot back, holding my ground. “Don’t try and twist that around.” It was a weak statement and I knew it. I could not defend my father and did not understand why I felt compelled to do so.

Alex continued, firing words at me like spit. “You’re a stone around her neck, Work. Plain and simple.”

“That’s you talking,” I said.

“Nope.” Her speech was as flat as her gaze, devoid of doubt or question. I looked around the squalid porch but found no help, just dead plants and a porch swing, where, I imagined, Alex filled my sister with lies and hate.

“What have you been telling her?” I demanded.

“You see? There’s the problem. I don’t need to tell her. She’s smart enough to figure it out.”

“I know she’s smart,” I said.

“You don’t act like it. You pity her. You condescend.”

“I do not.”

“I won’t have it,” she spat out, as if I’d interrupted her.

“I’ve taken her beyond all that. I’ve made her strong, given her something, and I won’t have you fucking it up.”

“I do not condescend to my sister,” I almost shouted. “I care for her. She needs me.”

“Denial won’t change fact, and she needs you like a hole in the head. You’re arrogant, like your father; she sees that. You presume to know what she needs, as if you could ever understand, but here’s the truth of it: You don’t know the first thing about who and what your sister is.”

“And you do, is that it? You know who my sister is? What she needs?” My voice was up. Anger moved in me and it felt good. Here was the enemy. Something I could see and touch.

“Yeah. That’s right,” she said. “I absolutely do.

“What?” I asked.

“Not what you want. Not empty dreams and illusions. Not a husband, a station wagon, and a weekly bridge club. Not the goddamn American dream. That package already sucked her dry.”

I stared at her glittering eyes and wanted to jam my fingers in them; they saw too clearly how much I was like my father. I’d never trusted Jean to find her own way, a brutal truth, and the fact of that, thrown so bluntly in my face by this woman I barely knew, drained me.

“Are you sleeping with my sister?” I asked.

“You know something, Work, fuck you. I don’t need to explain myself. Jean and I are together now. We know what we want, and you’re not part of the equation.”

“Who are you?” I demanded. “Why are you here?”

“Q and A is over, asshole. I want you out of here.”

“What do you want with my sister?” I shot back. She clenched her fists at her sides and I saw the bunch and play of muscles under her skin. Blood suffused her neck. She twisted her lower jaw.

“You need to leave,” she said.

“Jean owns this house.”

“And I live in it! Now get the hell off my porch.”

“Not until I talk to Jean,” I said, and crossed my arms. “I’ll wait.” Alex stiffened, but I refused to back down. I’d been pushed around too much in the past twenty-four hours. I wanted my sister, needed to know that she was all right. I needed her to understand that I was there for her, that I always would be. Indecision fluttered on Alex’s face. Then there was movement behind her, and the screen door swung open. Jean stepped onto the porch. I stared dumbly.

Her face was pale and puffy under tousled hair. Red rimmed her eyes and I saw that they were swollen.

“Just leave, Work,” she said. “Just go home.”

Then she turned and was gone, swallowed by the musty house. Alex grinned in bright triumph, then slammed the door in my face. I put my hands to the wood, then let them fall to my sides, where they twitched. I saw Jean’s face; it hung in the air like smoke. There was grief there, and pity, a dread finality.

In numb disbelief, I returned to my car, where I swayed, an emotional cripple. I stared at the house and its dirt yard and heard the whistle of an approaching train. I held my breath to keep from screaming; then all was wind and thunder.

CHAPTER 7

I
’d always heard about the last laugh, mostly from Ezra. I never knew that the last laugh could be something real, a thing you could remember and miss.

I could still hear my sister’s laugh. It had always been a good one, even when she didn’t quite get the joke. Usually soft, it had a peculiar hiccup in the middle. Her lips signaled it with a twitch; then her small white teeth appeared briefly, as if she were nervous; but sometimes it boomed and she snorted through her nose. Those laughs were rare. I loved them, mainly because she could never stop once she started, and tears would track silver down her face. Once, when we were kids, she laughed so hard, she blew a snot bubble with her nose, and we both laughed until we thought we might die for lack of air. It was the single best laugh of my life. That was twenty-five years ago.

I was there when Jean laughed her last laugh. I’d told a really bad joke, something about three lawyers and a dead body. She gave me her small laugh, the one with the hiccup. Then her husband came in and said that he was going to run the baby-sitter home. None of us knew they were sleeping together. So she kissed him on the cheek and told him to drive safely. He honked on his way down the driveway, and she smiled when she told me he always did that.

The accident happened at the rest stop two miles up the interstate. The car was parked. They were naked in the backseat, and he must have been on top, because the impact sent him through the windshield but left her in the car. He suffered a broken jaw, a concussion, and lacerations to his face, chest, and genitals, which seemed about right. The girl never regained consciousness, which was an absolute tragedy.

The state trooper told me that a drunk driver took the exit too fast, lost control, and slammed into their parked car. Just one of those things, he’d said. One of those crazy things.

Jean stood by her man for two months, until the paper announced that the comatose seventeen-year-old girl was pregnant; then she crumbled. I found her the first time she tried to kill herself. There was bloody water running under the bathroom door, and I dislocated my shoulder breaking it down. She’d kept her clothes on, and I later learned that she did that because she knew I’d find her and didn’t want to embarrass me. The thought of that broke my heart beyond repair.

Ezra refused to commit her. I begged, I argued, and I yelled, but he was resolute; it would look bad for the family. So Jean stayed with him and with Mother, the three of them alone in that big house.

When her husband left, he took their only child. Too depressed to care, she let him. He presented her with custody papers and she signed them. Had it been a son instead of a daughter, I suspect that Ezra would have fought him over it. But it was a girl, and so he didn’t.

That night, she tried again; this time it was pills. She wore her wedding dress and stretched out to die on our parents’ bed. After that, she was institutionalized for eight months—Alex Shiften was her roommate. When Jean went home, Alex went, too. We never learned a thing about her. The two shared a conspiracy of silence. Our questions, which began politely, were politely ignored. The questions grew more pointed, as did their reactions to them. When Alex told Ezra to fuck off, I thought the bottom would drop out. We stopped asking. None of us knew how to handle them, and in our discomfort we pretended everything was all right. What a ship of fools.

As I drove away from that ragged dead-end street, I thought about laughter and how it was like breath; you never knew which would be your last. And it saddened me that Jean’s last laugh had been such a small one. I wished I’d told a better joke.

I tried to remember my last laugh, but all I could think of was Jean and that snot bubble. That had been grand. But memory can be like a floodgate, once opened hard to close, and as I drove, images and feelings marched upon me like waves. I saw my mother, broken on the floor, then Ezra’s safe, his cold smirk, and Alex Shiften’s triumphant smile. I saw Jean as a child, and then grown, floating in a bathtub, her diluted blood a translucent shroud that shimmered across the floor and spilled down the stairwell. My wife’s hands, cold upon me, and, inevitably, images of Vanessa Stolen—the sweat on her face and on her thighs, her high breasts, which barely moved as she arched her back off the damp flannel sheets. I felt her eyes, heard the stutter in her throat as she gasped my name, and thought of the secret that for so many years had kept me from giving myself to her. And of how profoundly I failed her in that deep dark place where both our lives changed forever.

But some things are stronger than doubt or self-recrimination. Need, for instance. To be accepted. Loved without judgment. Even when I couldn’t reciprocate. Time and again, I had returned to the one place, the one person who had never failed me. I’d done this knowing the pain that lingered in my wake. I’d taken all and given nothing. As for something in return, she’d neither asked nor demanded, though hers would have been the right. And I’d tried to stay away; I’d tried and failed. I knew also that I would fail again now. My need was too great, an animal inside me.

So I turned off the road, turned off the world, and drove slowly down the cratered track that was Stolen Farm Road. It felt like a switch had been flicked in my head. Pressures fell away, concerns, too. I could breathe, and so I did, like I’d been long underwater. I passed through the shade of tall oaks and narrow, feathered cedars, and gravel crunched beneath my tires. I saw a shrike with a fence lizard in its claws and felt elemental, as if I, too, belonged here. It was a good feeling, though false, and there were no whispers beyond the wind.

I rounded the last bend and saw Vanessa’s house. She stood on the front porch, shading her eyes, and for a moment I believed that she’d felt my approach. My chest tightened and I felt a stirring of body and soul. Even more than this place, this woman did things for me. She was farmwork-lean, with flaxen hair and eyes that shone like sun on water. Her hands were rough, but I loved them for the things they could do. I liked to watch her plant things, those hands in dark earth. It reminded me of what I knew as a child, that dirt is good and the earth forgives. Her breasts were small above a flat stomach, and her eyes were soft where tragedy would have made others hard or indifferent. Small lines cut the corners of her eyes and mouth but were inconsequential.

Looking at her, I felt my weakness. I knew this was wrong, knew that I could never give her what she so richly deserved. I knew it and for an instant I cared, but only for that instant. Then I was out of the car and in her arms, my mouth on hers, my hands no longer mine to control. I didn’t know if I was on the porch or still in the drive. I didn’t remember moving, yet all was motion. She rose into me and I was lost. No fear or confusion, just this woman and the world that spun around us like colored mist.

I heard distant sound and recognized my name; it burned in my ear. Then I felt her tongue cool it. Her lips moved over me—my eyes, my neck, my face. Her hands found the back of my head and they pulled my lips back to hers. I tasted plums, kissed her harder, and she weakened against me. I picked her up, felt legs around me. Then more motion and we were inside, up the stairs and onto the bed that knew so well the force of our passion. Clothes evaporated, as if burned away by flesh too hot to bear them. My mouth found her breasts, the hard, ready nipples, and the soft plane of her stomach. I tasted all of her. The dew of her sweat, the deep cleft of her, her legs like velvet bands across my ears. Her fingers clawed at my hair, tangled, and she pulled me up, said words I couldn’t possibly understand. She took me in her roughened palm and led me into her. My head rocked back. She was heat, fire; she cried my name again, but I was beyond response, lost and desperate never to be found.