A Field Guide to Deception

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

Part One

If you don't get it, then you've got it

One

Sailing small boys

The boy had fallen into the water. Usually, Liv stood within easy grasp of him, but she'd stepped away to crush her cigarette, and as she'd turned, Simon slid right off the bank and into the water. His head hadn't submerged, but his eyes went wide. She grabbed his shirt at his chest and heaved him out.

“Are you OK?”

He nodded, gasped. Nodded again.

She hugged him against her, both their hearts raging. Afraid. She'd been afraid. In the moment he'd slipped, she'd seen him dragged away into the current and lost. She'd seen him disappear. With the child pressed against her, she ran toward the house, up through the brush and the larkspur and the ugly meadow scrub toward Claire.

“I'm sorry,” she said, handing the child to Claire. All of them drenched now. “I'm sorry. He just slid right off the bank. He just slid. He was on the bank, then right into the water. He didn't do anything wrong. He just slid right off.”

Claire undressed him, asked Liv to grab her a towel from the bathroom. Liv dashed into the bathroom and back. “It was surprising,” Liv said as she gave the towel to her. “He just slid right off.”

“It's OK,” Claire said to Liv. “You're OK.”

Simon hadn't cried or shouted. He shivered now as his mother toweled him dry.

“Bath?” he asked.

“Would you like one?” his mother asked.

He nodded, hurried naked from the room.

Liv walked out to the deck, her shirt and pants cold against her, and wanted to scream. Her heart wouldn't quiet. First the girl last night, shivering so hard that Liv thought maybe it was a seizure, and finally realized the girl was sobbing. When Liv stopped, and tucked around her, the girl clung to her and cried into Liv's chest and kept apologizing, “This is so embarrassing. I don't know what's wrong with me.”

They were related, the girl last night and Simon this morning. Simon, only three years old, and drenched rather than crying, but they both needed her protection. They both needed Liv to help them. Now, in her sopping clothes, she felt herself crying and was paralyzed by it. She stood on the deck and wept.

In the house, Claire put Simon down for his nap. Comforter pulled over his head, he stilled almost at once, and she went outdoors, stood on the rapidly appearing deck, and waited, as Liv hammered slat after slat at a furious pace. Claire shielded her face with her arm, the buttons of her shirtsleeve pressed against her hair, and watched the woman on her knees. Claire kept looking for reasons to interrupt. Over the past month, she'd volunteered to help transport loads of wood, or roofing shingle for the garage, or wallboard and insulation; something always needed hauling. Claire kept asking the woman working for her to put her to work. She'd rather be out here, with Liv, than in that office alone.

Just this morning, she'd discovered that the last of her aunt's research was missing. She'd riffled through all the papers in the office, frantic that she might have misplaced it. That she might have lost something else.

Barely June, still cool enough in the mornings for Simon to wear socks with his sandals, and already Liv was dark, her cheeks lightly colored with freckles. Claire imagined she could see those freckles now, though Liv's head was bowed toward her work. Both women were small and dark-haired, athletic and quick, with remarkable definition
along their arms, Claire's from hefting Simon.

When Liv stood to grab more wood, Claire dropped her arm at her side. “He's OK,” Claire said quietly. “He's sleeping and he's fine. Things like this happen. It's not your fault. Neither of you did anything wrong.”

Liv didn't speak.

“You've almost finished,” Claire said, looking at the deck.

“Yes.”

“Then you'll start on the house?”

“The kitchen, yes.”

“I like that you're here. I'm glad.” Claire turned and went back into the house.

When Simon came outside, after his nap, he squealed and ran around the deck. It had a railing now, like a little ladder, which he immediately clambered up. He could crow from here. He could drive his trains along the railing; it was like a high track, a mountain track. All Liv's tools were gone, and in their place, recliners with cushions. Stretched on the largest recliner, he leaned back and stared into the sky. The cushion's buttons pressed into his back. Near the railing, a butterfly fluttered like lint in the air. She'd built this. She'd built it for him. He scrambled down and walked through the fields, searching for Liv, but her yellow truck was gone.

Later that evening, Liv returned in time to watch Simon help his mother stack charcoal on the grill, and then the child climbed onto the railing while Claire lit the lumpy black hill.

“He asked for hamburgers,” Claire said, “and to eat outside, on the deck. Like a picnic.”

Liv handed him a long wooden dowel. “A sword,” she said.

The boy's eyes lit. He ran into the yard and whirled around with it,
smacking shrubs and the deck and the air until he was called to dinner.

“You can play with it after you eat,” Claire told him.

Simon laid the dowel on the table beside his plate, but kept his hand on it.

Liv took in the slices of tomato, onion, pickle, and the potato wedges, everything laid on plates like an offering. Simon dunked his quartered hamburger into the ketchup, and murmured as he ate.

As Liv fixed a burger, she asked, “How's your work?” Still unsure what Claire's work entailed. For several weeks, since the beginning of May, Liv had been living on the property, in her ridiculous pink trailer, building a garage to replace the shed and carport, and this deck, and could only say that Claire sat every day in front of her computer.

“Oh,” Claire said, and grabbed Simon's glass of milk before it toppled. “I need to take a research trip, I think, west of here. I'll camp and hunt. Take a few notes. My aunt's notes are incomplete, or I've lost some.”

“Camp and hunt,” Liv repeated. “Tell me about your book again?”

“It's a mycology field guide.”

Right. Mycology. Claire was a beautiful geek, Liv understood that much. At first, Claire had seemed evasive about her work, and her aunt, but tonight, maybe because of Simon's calamitous plunge into the river, in an effort to reassure Liv that she wasn't angry with her, Claire had answered a question about her work with more than four words.