The Good Lie (13 page)

Christmas Cards

[1]

I sent Jason a card saying I was
sorry and I hoped he would have a good Christmas.  He still didn’t call.

My father sent me a card with a
letter inside about honoring your mother and father, about not bearing false
witness, about the wages of sin being death.  About what a horrible daughter I
was being.  Merry Christmas.

My mother sent me a card telling me
she loved me and hoped we could go into the  new year with a fresh start.  She
also invited me for Christmas dinner with Mikey.  And Charles.

Ho, ho, ho.

[2]

“I’d rather have Mexican with you.”

Mrs. Sherbern seemed sympathetic.  “I
know your mom will be glad to see you.  Try to cheer up.”

I asked Posie about the men in her
own mother’s life.  Had she ever brought any of them home?

“Never,” Posie said.  “I don’t
think she’s ever dated.  I’ve never heard her talk about anyone.”

“Your father’s been gone how long?”

“Twelve years.”

“Your mom’s gorgeous.  I can’t
believe she wouldn’t have a man.”

“I know.  But she doesn’t seem to
miss it.”

Obviously my mother had a different
mix of hormones.  Because when she opened the door and ushered me in and
finally introduced me to her lover, all I could think was:

SEX.

Because he reeked it from every
pore.

The man was STUNNING.

In fact, he looked a little like
Jason.  How weird is that?  Tall, same thick, black hair, dark brown eyes,
wickedly sexy smile.

I wanted to puke.

Suddenly I could imagine too much: 
all those positions, all that sweat and screaming and writhing.  Oh, my God,
they must have had sex every single minute they were together.  No wonder my
mother looked so thin.  She could barely find time to eat.

He shook my hand.  I was already
ready to bolt.

My mother put her arm around me and
smiled proudly.  “Isn’t she a beauty?”

“Just like her mother.”

Please, please spare me.

It was just the four of us,
including Mikey.  My little brother seemed so happy to have us all—or most of
us—together again as a family.  And as far as I could tell, he actually liked Charles.

“So, Charles,” I said, “how long
you two been together?”

“Lizzie—”  My mother shot me a
warning look.

“It’s okay,” Charles said.  He
patted his mouth with a cloth napkin.  The table sure was fancy—gold-rimmed
plates, silver serving pieces, crystal glasses—the works.

I wondered if that was his taste or
his decorator’s.  We certainly didn’t have those things at home.

“I think you know how your mother
and I met.”

“Yeah, so how long did it take?” I
asked smugly.  What a bitch I can be.

Charles covered my mother’s hand
with his own.  “I love your mother very much.”

“Uh-huh.”  I took another bite of
bread.  “So, are you going to marry her?  I mean, when the divorce is final.”

“Lizzie!  Would you try to behave? 
We can talk about those things later.”

Mikey couldn’t wait to swallow what
was in his mouth.  “Are you?”

“I don’t know yet, honey.  We’ll
talk about it later.”  My mother widened her eyes at me.  It felt good to be me
right then.

“I’m writing a new story,” I
announced.  “About a girl who goes to school one day and comes home and
discovers her mother has fled the country.  Turns out the mother was a CIA
agent and never told her daughter.  And now all these people are after her.  It
should be good.  I haven’t figured out the ending yet.”

“Yes,” Charles said, “your mother
told me you like to write.  I think that’s great.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “One day maybe I’ll
write about you.”

“Lizzie, can I talk to you?”

I had to suppress my smile.  I was
having such a good time.  But I knew my mother was angry.

We met in Charles’s hallway—thick
reddish-gold carpeting, golden rust walls—definitely my mother’s touch.  She
loved things the color of her hair.  It was her own particular vanity.

“Lizzie, I’m going to have to ask
you to leave.”

I wasn’t expecting that.  My smug
expression vanished.  “Can’t you take a little fun?”

“Fun?  You think treating Charles
rudely is attractive, young lady?  You’re embarrassing me!”

“Oh, sorry to embarrass you,
Mother,” I snapped.  “Wouldn’t want to do that.”

“What’s gotten into you?  I thought
we were getting along so well?”

The truth is, we had been.  I could
sit through a dinner with my mother and Mikey now and hardly ever say anything
nasty.

I shrugged.  I didn’t like having
her in my face like that.  Why did I even come?

“You can go out there and be nice,”
my mother said, “or I’ll take you back to Posie’s right now.”

“Fine.  Take me back.”

My mother shook her head.  Tears
welled.  “I thought we were doing so much better.”

“Guess not,” I mumbled, and went to
get my purse.

[3]

It used to be on Christmas Eve we
would go as a family to church.

It used to be I would sit with my
best friend Tessa Blake and we’d sing harmony to all the Christmas hymns.  At
the end of the service we’d all light our candles, and the lights would go out,
and the whole congregation would hold up our candles and softly sing
Silent
Night.

Nothing could be more beautiful.

Then afterward we’d all stand
outside in the freezing air having hot chocolate and frosted sugar cookies the
church ladies served from their cart.

Tessa and I would exchange gifts. 
Something small—a bracelet, a necklace, whatever.  Everywhere around us, people
would hug.  A magical, loving event.

It used to be my parents and little
brother and I would go home then, and even though it was already late, we’d
stay up a little while longer and light the tree and pick out one gift apiece
to exchange.  All the rest of them had to wait until Christmas morning, when we’d
awaken to the smell of my mother’s sweet rolls and sausage frying on the stove.

It used to be my mother and father
slept in the same bed, my brother was an innocent child, and I was a happy
girl.

Wishing you and yours a happy,
healthy, reincarnated Christmas.

They don’t have cards for that.

The Root of All Evil

[1]

It was the beginning of the spring
semester, and a fear began to nibble at me.  I put off examining it for as long
as I could, but it was always there and I had to address it soon.

College.  What about college?

“Any day now!” Miss Stewart said
when I asked her if she’d heard about financial aid for me.

Any day now wasn’t soon enough.  I’m
a planner.  Graduation wasn’t that far off, and I needed to know what to do.

I couldn’t go scraping to my father
and say, “Hey, I know I’ve accused you of molesting me, and Mom has included
that in her divorce petition and she’s suing for custody of Mikey and me, and I
know you know I hate you, but I could really use tuition for a four-year
college, so what do you say—bygones?”  But it wouldn’t be bygones, of course,
because I wouldn’t stop hating him just because he paid.  So there was nothing
about that scenario that worked.  I was on my own.

No help from my mother, either. 
She had gotten a few small decorating jobs, but that certainly wasn’t enough to
support herself and two kids, let alone send one of them to college.  I’m sure Charles
was still helping her, but what was I going to do—ask him?  Not after my
Christmas performance.  So no salvation there.

I was seriously starting to panic. 
Maybe my father was right about what he said that day in the park—that I would
fail because I didn’t think things through.

I was so focused on trying not to
freak out that when Mrs. Sherbern brought it up she caught me completely off
guard.

“Sugar,” she said one night over a
dinner of take out from her favorite Cajun restaurant, “I think you know you’re
always welcome here.”

I don’t think I even nodded, and I
know I didn’t say anything, because I was sure the next words would be bad news—something
like, “But it’s time to move on.  I want my house back.”

“You’re like a sister to Posie,”
Mrs. Sherbern continued, “and almost like another daughter to me.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled past the
mouthful of jambalaya I still hadn’t managed to swallow.

Posie intervened.  “My mom has an offer
to make.”

I met Posie’s eyes and found them
bright with mischief.

“Mom is going to be your foster
mom,” Posie announced.  “She checked into it, and if she does it officially,
she’ll get money from the state, and then she can afford to—”

Mrs. Sherbern broke in.  “I want to
send you to college.  With Posie.”

I suffered then.  I couldn’t bear
it.  I bowed my head to cry.  Man, how I cried.  It was too hard, hearing out
loud that I had lost both my parents and was now orphan enough that my best
friend’s mother would have to adopt me.  That she wanted to—that was hard to
hear, too.  I didn’t know her very well and I didn’t love her.  I didn’t look
at her as a substitute mother.  I felt guilty and overwhelmingly grateful that
she would even consider such generosity.

“I can’t,” I burbled.  I swallowed
the lump in my mouth.  I lifted my weepy eyes to Mrs. Sherbern’s and said, “Thank
you so much, but I can’t.”

She smiled gently.  “Of course you
can.”

“No.  It wouldn’t be right.”

“Who says?” Posie demanded.  “Don’t
be silly.  My mom and I talked about it—it’s perfect.  You and I can keep
living here and—”

I pushed my chair back and stood.  “I’m
sorry.  I have to go.”

There was no place to flee but out
the door.  I walked the neighborhood for an hour in the dark.  I stumbled over
the pavement, crying and talking to myself and trying to sort out all the
opportunity and misery that had just come my way.

Was this a blessing from God, and I
was spitting in His eye by saying no?  Or was Mrs. Sherbern’s offer just one
more wrong thing in a whole sequence of them, and it was up to me to start
righting them one by one?

Money is so personal.  You can act
like it isn’t but it is.  It’s not money that’s the root of all evil—people get
that wrong all the time.  The Bible says it’s the
love
of money that
destroys you.  I don’t love money—I fear it.  I’ve been brought up to
understand how corrupting it is.  It becomes your idol, the thing you worship
and organize your life around:  Do I have it?  Can I get it?  How much?  How
quickly?  Do I have more than he does?  How did he get it?

In our church if you were rich you
couldn’t be ostentatious about it—that’s a sin.  It shows both Pride and Greed
(tell that to the TV evangelists).  So you drive a modest car for ten years
before you buy another modest car.  You live in a house that’s just big
enough.  (Mind you, not everyone follows this—there were plenty of gaudy houses
in our congregation, but ideally you’d want to act like that was the only house
you could find on short notice, and you’ve had to learn to live with it.  Or
you bought from my father, and then everyone understood it was God’s will that
you live in such a fine house.)  You can take nice vacations with your family,
but not too many and not too far away.  You rarely eat out—that’s a waste.

But Mrs. Sherbern wasn’t like
that.  She didn’t spend money crazily, but she also didn’t horde it.  She
bought herself and Posie whatever they needed.  She ordered out whenever she
felt like it.  She spent money on manicures and massages and hairstyles, and
had a gardener and a pool guy and a cleaning woman once a week.  My father
would have hated being married to her.  He would have made her life hell.

But I was my father’s daughter,
whether I liked it or not, and I couldn’t help thinking the way he did.  You
don’t spend your money lightly.  And you don’t borrow from your friends.  You
don’t ever let someone hold that over your head.  Not that Mrs. Sherbern would
do that, but I couldn’t shake that voice in my ear.

I quietly reentered the house. 
Posie and her mother were both in their rooms.  I closed the bedroom door
behind me and sat down on my bed.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” Posie answered.

I lay out full length and groaned. 
“I am such an idiot.  Your mother must think I’m such an ungrateful little pig.”

“Of course she doesn’t.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Hers, believe it or not.”

I lowered my voice so Mrs. Sherbern
wouldn’t hear.  “Why?”

“Maybe she likes you.”

“Maybe she feels sorry for me.”

“Yeah, I guess that, too,” Posie
said.  “But she can afford it.  That part about the state giving her money—that
actually doesn’t matter.  My dad left us with plenty.  You should let her do
this, Lizzie.  She wants to.”

“And what about the foster thing?”

“She just thought that might make
it more official—you know, like you’d always have a place to come home to.”

Apparently my tears hadn’t fully
drained.  I swiped my finger at a few of them, then gave up and went to the
bathroom for some tissues.  I returned with a business-like mind.

“I have parents, you know.”

“Oh, I think I know that.”

“They can afford me to send me,
too.”

“Well, your dad can anyway.  But do
you really want to ask him?”

I sighed and slumped back onto my
pillow.  “No.  That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“This way you wouldn’t have to.”

“But I can’t ask that of your
mother, either.”

“You’re not asking,” Posie said.  “She
offered.  Why are you being so stubborn?  You know you need this.”

And here was the point, the one I’d
come to on my walk without realizing I had.  I heard myself say it and I
understood that it was true.  “I want to do it myself.”

“Okay, how?”

She was too quick.  I needed to
bask for a moment in my pronouncement. 
I want
to do it myself.
 
Just like graduating early.  I wanted to feel how hard it was to work for
something, then know that it belonged to me alone because of that.

“Maybe I won’t start college right
away,” I said.  “I’ll get a job and save up.”

“For how long?”

“I can get loans.  Or financial aid.”

“Yeah, I suppose.  Or you could
just stop being such a brat and tell my mother thank you very much and let her
feel good about spending money on you.”

I felt better already.  A zygote of
a plan was forming in my brain.  I would do it all myself and show everybody,
including myself, that I didn’t need anybody but myself.

I felt calm and happy in a way I
hadn’t for a long time.  “That’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to go tell
your mother thanks, but no thanks.”

“Wait,” Posie cautioned.  “Sleep on
it.”

I bounded from the bed.  “I need to
get it off my chest now.  Then I can think clearly.”

I knocked on Mrs. Sherbern’s
bedroom door.  “It’s Lizzie.”

“Come on in, sugar.”

She was sitting in bed, propped up
on double pillows, reading a Nora Roberts romance.

“God, she’s good,” Mrs. Sherbern
told me.  She fanned a hand in front of her face.  “Too steamy.”  She laid the
book down and patted the bedspread beside her.  “Come talk to me.”

I’ll admit to a longing just then
for those nights when my mother and I sat in the family room talking about my
crush on Jason and my school work and whatever play or story I was writing. 
Yes, I know that whole experience was a lie, but at the time I really loved
it.  I felt the way a daughter should feel toward her mother.  I missed that
feeling so much I wanted to scratch my fingernails across my chest and burrow
down to my heart and pick it up by the corner and shake it clean like resetting
an Etch-a-Sketch.

“I really appreciate your offer,” I
began, and Mrs. Sherbern held up a nicely-manicured hand before I could say any
more.

“Lizzie, I know what you’re going
to say.  You’re going to refuse me, and that’s fine, but you should know why
you’re doing it.  It can’t be because it would be a hardship to me—you know it
wouldn’t.  Posie’s dad did very well for us, and Posie gets Social  Security
because of him.  We have plenty of money to get by on, and then some.

“Second, if you think Posie
pressured me into it—”

“Oh, no, I don’t—”

“—well, she didn’t,” Mrs. Sherbern
said.  “I wanted to do this myself.  I think you’re a fine girl, Lizzie, and I
appreciate what a good friend you’ve been to my daughter.  I have the feeling
you keep Posie on the straight and narrow.”

“It’s her,” I protested.  “She does
that for me.”

“I like seeing my daughter with a
good girl like you.  I’m not stupid—I see what’s out there.  Some of her old
friends . . .”  Mrs. Sherbern shuddered theatrically.  “That Megan was a tawdry
girl and I don’t mind saying so.  I know her mother, and I’m not surprised.

“And,” Mrs. Sherbern went on, “I
think you’re brilliant, Lizzie, and that’s the truth.  I’ve watched how hard
you study, and I know it’s not every kid in your situation who’d have the
brains and focus to finish high school in three years.  I’m proud of you, and I
hope you’re proud, too.”

I was so tired of crying, but here
it was again.  I laid face down on her bed and let it come.  Mrs. Sherbern was
kind enough not to stroke my back or mother me in any way.  We were two grown
women discussing a serious matter, and if one of us had to keep crying about
it, that didn’t change the nature of our talk.

I sat up again in due time and
wiped my eyes.

“Why don’t you rinse your face and
come back,” Mrs. Sherbern suggested.  “You can use my bathroom.”

I had only been in there a few
times, briefly—maybe looking for extra toilet paper or a tampon.  It wasn’t
like my own mother’s bathroom.  This one was all girl—bras hanging to dry in
the shower, makeup cluttering the counter, perfumes and hair spray out on
display like you would if you didn’t have to make room for your husband.

I rinsed my face and dried it and
blew my nose a couple of times.  I composed myself, because I knew the last
final push was coming, and if I wasn’t careful she’d talk me into what I’d
already, wisely, decided against.

So I tried to seize control.  “I
really appreciate all you’ve said—really.  But it isn’t right.  It’s not your
job.  I can—”

“I know it’s not my job, but I’d
like it to be.”

“Mrs. Sherbern—”

She smiled at my exasperation.  I
could see she thought she had already won.

I decided to stall, rather than
continue the argument.  “I’m meeting with my counselor again pretty soon.  She
already helped me apply for scholarships.  Maybe she’s heard something.  Let me
see what she says, okay?  Then we’ll talk again.”

“It’s too late for a scholarship,
isn’t it?” Mrs. Sherbern asked.  “Don’t those get handed out by now?”

“Uh, well—”  I swallowed hard. 
Maybe I had already lost my shot, and Miss Stewart had been afraid to tell me
so.  “Okay, so maybe I’ll have to sit out the first semester—”

“No, you won’t.  You’re starting
with Posie this fall and that’s that.”

She was more stubborn than I knew,
and a little bit imperial.  There was no point in arguing.  I would have to do
what I was going to do in secret and let her think I had given in.

“We’ll see,” I said.

Mrs. Sherbern smiled.  “Then it’s
settled.”

“No, we’ll see.  Let me think about
it some more.”

“Don’t think too long, Lizzie.  We
should start making plans soon.  Do you and Posie want to keep living here? 
Might as well, huh?  I might get lonely if both my girls move out at once.”

Both my girls . . .

“Okay,” I answered, “I’ll think
about it.”

[2]

I got right to the point.

“How much are you going to ask for?” 
Angela and I had discussed various numbers in the past, but she still hadn’t
decided last time we talked.

“Okay,” she said, “I think we’ll
start at four hundred thousand, let him talk us down to two-fifty—that sound
fair?”

“Two hundred fifty,” I repeated. 
It sounded like a mint.