Little Black Lies (8 page)

T
hat night, I'm in an uncommonly good mood.

I glance around to see all the other regulars in their usual spots, all creatures of habit, like me. Hot coffee in a pleasantly hefty mug, with just the right amount of cream (Eddie is skilled at that), and the design of a bronzed leaf staring up at me in all its foamy goodness that I am about to decimate with my tongue. My favorite leather settee with just the right grooves to fit my body. Feet up on the hearth of the fireplace, heat wafting out, enveloping me in a cloud of warmth. Black-velvet night sky pressing against the window, with pinhole stars gleaming through.

I have a rosy outlook tonight, like Scrooge maybe, after he came back to the present, handing out sixpence and turkeys and such. Things seem to be, at least for the moment, going my way. Sofia opened up with me, even if just an inch; hypnosis was a smashing success.

In a word: I am happy.

Dum-dum-dum-dah.
The DSM V book skitters out of my hand, and my heart does a tap dance. Finally, radio silence has been broken!

Skype?
I read in the text.

Sure.
I pull my laptop out as fast as my hands will let me and boot up, connecting to him. Jean Luc is blurry for a few seconds, then crystallizes onto the screen. He looks good, as usual, maybe a little on the pale side.

“Sorry I haven't texted you. Things are crazy around here.” His accent sounds stronger than I remember.

“That's okay,” I assure him. “We're all busy.” As if I haven't been pining away for the sound of Beethoven's Fifth every day.

Jean Luc takes a deep breath, ducks his head into his hands, then lifts it again with a pained smile. My stomach starts sinking.

“Zoe, there is not a good way to say this, so I'm just going to say it. I've fallen in love with someone.”

My heart stops dancing.

“I want us to stay the very best of friends, if we can. But if we can't, I do understand.” His speech sounds rehearsed, but there is a tremor in his voice. I watch the words come out of his mouth as if he is talking with the volume off. “Zoe, are you all right?”

“Fine, fine,” I answer, sounding far off. “Anyone I know?” I ask this half in jest. Who would I know in DC?

He looks down at his butcher-block kitchen table. “Mel­anie.”

“Melanie?” A sour laugh escapes me. Of course, the beautiful siren, the honey-voiced, blond-hair-slicked-back Mel­anie. I picture the whole nasty affair like a movie going fast-forward. The irresistible Melanie, the tried-to-be-true best friend, the cuckolded fool, all the usual characters in the same old, tawdry soap opera from time eternal. My broken heart is not just unoriginal, it's cliché.

Jean Luc leans toward the camera, his gray eyes looming. “We didn't mean for this. Robbie was away for the weekend, we had dinner together, and one thing led to the other thing, as you say.”

“Right,” I say, nodding. One thing led to the other thing,
i
sn't that always how it happens?

“Zoe?” I hear again, and I realize I have been nodding at the screen for the last minute. My head is about to fall off from all the nodding. “I am very sorry about this,” he says.

“Yeah, I have to go,” I say.

“Zoe, please, do you—”

But I don't let him finish. I close the laptop, folding him in half and stuck in DC forever, then have the odd feeling I have trapped him in the computer. Puzzling over this, I look up to see Scotty standing in front of me.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You look like you're about to hurl.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, seriously, you're pale as a ghost.”

“I'm fine,” I insist.

He shrugs and walks away. Scotty's right, I feel like vomiting in my coffee. Jean Luc fell in love with his roommate's girlfriend? The supposedly annoying Meh-lah-nee who named her boyfriend's cat Kitty? Analyzing this ridiculous notion for a half second, I know I should feel as though I have dodged a bullet. But I don't. I feel as though the bullet is lodged inches away from my spinal cord.

I blow into my coffee, holding on tightly to the mug like a lifeboat. Water stings my eyes, and my nose starts to run. It is at least a small mercy I am not crying over Skype. Because, as in all other things, I am not a pretty crier. Out of the corner of my eye I see Eddie pointing to me, trying to look inconspicuous. Scotty strides over and sits down, folding his long limbs into the velour chair next to me.

“All right, what's going on?”

I stare out the window, hiccuping like an idiot. The night, oddly enough, is still gorgeous. Snowflakes float through the sky like feathers, an early November snow.

“Is it that asshole, Frog-Boy?”

“Jean Luc,” I choke out to defend him. After all, he has a name.

Scotty stares at me, the James Dean look softening his face. “You know what? Fuck him,” he says. “Eddie is a hundred times better than that French piece of shit.”

“I know. I'm sure he is.”

I sit there a minute, wiping my eyes while he pretends not to notice. Boys are never good at watching girls cry.

Finally, Scotty heaves a sigh. “Love sucks,” he says, which is as good a consolation as any, and I give him a weak smile in thanks. Scotty pats my knee uncomfortably and gets up to go back to work. Eddie (who is undoubtedly a hundred times better than Jean Luc) wanders by, apparently to tidy up and straighten chairs, but all the while peering over at me to be sure I haven't launched myself out the window yet (which, as it's on the ground floor, would result in only minor injuries, a skinned knee perhaps).

I finish my lukewarm coffee and head home. The apartment is dark and empty, cold. Our place is an old Buffalo house, Arts and Crafts with original leaded windows, full of old-world charm.
Old
also means drafty, however, and tonight I am chilled to the bone. I flick on some lights, turn on the gas fireplace, and fall into our beat-up, red corduroy couch. Sam needs a couch like this, instead of that monstrous, dark brown thing. We got it cheap from an estate sale when Scotty had volunteered to shop for some new furniture for the Coffee Spot. I pull my phone from my purse but suddenly realize that the only person I really want to talk to is my mom. But I can't bear the thought of her asking me, “Who is Jean Luc again?”

So I put down the phone and just sit on the couch, warmed by the fireplace. The grandfather clock (from the same estate sale and heavy as hell to get into the apartment) gongs out ten o'clock. Yawning, I decide that's a respectable time to admit defeat for the day and drag myself upstairs to my bedroom. I sit down heavily on my bed, the burgundy comforter ballooning around me. Looking around my room, I see Jean Luc's gold-framed picture on the middle shelf of my bookcase. A cork is right next to it, standing up at attention, a stupid souvenir I kept from a date at Yale. An overly expensive Italian meal complete with corny violin serenade and a red rose. I walk over, pull the cork off the shelf, and sniff it. The red wine scent used to thrill me, sending a bolt of desire through my bones. Now it just makes me sick. I toss it in the garbage, along with his framed picture, with a crash.

Within minutes, I am pulling on my favorite comfy, blue-cotton pajamas, peeling my drying contacts out of my eyes, and swallowing three magic white pills. I know full well that this is a bad idea. I am supposed to take only one at a time, and I will run out early, but I take them anyway. Then I climb into bed, the cool sheets welcoming me, and slowly, slowly, my brain stops humming.

I
want you to look for a house up ahead,” Sam's voice intones. “Do you see it?”

I am gliding in the bright-red boat, sun shimmering on the river. I shield my eyes, gazing into the ceramic-blue, cloudless sky. Suddenly I see a house up ahead on the grass riverbank, as if it were conjured up from thin air. “Yes,” I answer in a disembodied voice.

“Describe it to me.”

“Dark brown wood, dirty windows,” I tell him. It is a foreboding, decrepit house. Spartan and bare, like something you might find falling apart in the middle of the woods.

“I want you to go in the house,” he says.

So I do. I am magically off the boat and transported onto the front steps. The stairs creak, and the porch is stained a muddy, black-brown color. A tall maroon vase hovers next to the door, like a spittoon, with a cobweb lacing it to the front door. The place looks like a haunted house on a movie set. Even in the midst of hypnosis, it strikes me
that my imaginary house does not suggest a sanguine state of mind.

“Go into the house,” he repeats.

I don't want to, but Sam's voice is strong, and I pull open the heavy door to a gleaming white room. The floor is marble white. I step in gingerly, feeling like a little kid who is trespassing. The walls are freshly painted white. When I turn around, I see my own black footprints following me. I am tracking in soot.

“Do you recognize anything?” he asks.

“No,” I answer. Except maybe some heavy-handed symbolism I'll have to decode in a later therapy session. I look ahead to stairs, which are covered in a run-down, puke-green carpet, threads pouched up from years of catching book bags, high heels, puppy claws. Years of wear and tear. My feet are taking me up the stairs. I don't want to go, but I can't stop them.

“What is happening?” Sam asks.

“Stairs,” I answer. As I ascend, I realize something strange is happening. Time is spinning forward at a rapid pace, as in a reality TV show where the camera pans in on a house from daybreak to sunset in a few seconds, pictorially flipping through the hours with the clouds racing by. With each step it turns darker outside, until I'm at the top and it is pitch-black outside the window. Silent. I have been here before.

“What are you seeing?” he asks. “Don't forget. You have to stay with me, Zoe.”

“The laundry room,” I say, surprised at my answer. The laundry room? I walk into the gray darkness. I can hear whirring, and I put my hand on the dryer. Warm. The room is warm. “That's the whirring!” I yell out, surprised and thrilled.

“What is?”

“The dryer. That's the sound I always hear in my dream!” I could never identify that rhythmic motor. Now I hear it clearly, the soft rumbling. I look down at the floor and see shadows of branches, swaying. Outside the moon is out, white-bright.

I hear footsteps, whispers. I reach out and shut the door, by millimeters, careful not to make any noise. The door clicks, and the footsteps stop. My heart freezes. Whispers, and then footsteps again. I am panting in fear.

“What's going on, Zoe?” Sam says. “Stay with me here. Don't do this alone.”

“They're coming.”

“Who?”

“I don't know,” I say, my voice shaking. My mother? My father? I hear the rumble of the dryer. Outside the door, music is playing. Loud classical music. Crashing cymbals, scratching cellos. “I hear music,” I say.

“What else?” he asks.

I sit down, rag-doll exhausted, on the cold, white floor. The moon is a marble in the sky. I put my hand against the moan of the dryer, which is comforting. The orchestral music blares and fades from down the hall. I hear a bedroom door opening, then slamming shut. The sweet smell of smoke is wafting into the room.

“I smell something now,” I say.

“What is it? Can you tell?”

“Smoke, I think,” I say. The smell is a deep cedar. Tobacco? Maybe the fire started with a pipe.

“Do you see any smoke?”

“No, not yet,” I answer, looking under the door. I envision a plume of smoke wafting outside the door. I picture this but I do not actually see it, because I will not open the door. I touch the doorknob, which is warm, but not hot.

“Do you see your mother?”

“No,” I say, my voice desperate. “She's supposed to be here.”

“It's okay,” Sam answers, his voice calm and soothing. “I want you to focus on one feature of your mother that you remember. One feature, and see if she appears before you. Then she'll be there for you, Zoe, and she can help you. We can both help you. I know you're scared, but you're not alone.”

Of course I choose her eyes, her big, deep, brown doe eyes. I am staring into them, summoning them forth. Brown eyes, shining, sad. But she does not come. Footsteps. I slump down against the dryer again.

“She's not coming,” I whisper. I am stroking Po-Po, my pale-blue, lovely bear. But he is larger than I remember. He fills my arms.

Scenes of a carnival flitter into my mind. I'm out of the house for an instant. Happy organ music fills the air, kids yelling and screeching. Rows of blue and pink cotton candy jog by us, and then I see a huge, sharp dart dive into a balloon with a loud “snap!” and freckly teenage arms handing me a big blue bear, which I can't believe is mine. I reach up to hug my mom. My mom! I can smell her sweet, sweaty scent on her T-shirt. I can feel her, the warmth of her arms, though I cannot see her.

“Do you see her now?” Sam asks.

The carnival disappears, and the whirring moans in my ears again. “I don't know. She was here, but she's gone now. She's gone. I don't know where she went.” I feel myself growing panicky again.

“Can you call her?” he asks. “Try to call her, Zoe.”

“I can't,” I whisper. “I'm hiding.”

“Who are you hiding from?”

“I don't know,” I answer. “It's hot.” I feel myself crying. Sweat glistens on me in the heat, and then I feel the burning in my hands. Blood springs up from zigzag lines across my palm
s
, dripping on Po-Po. I am horrified to get Po-Po dirty. I might get in trouble. My hands are throbbing with my heartbeat. Searing red pain. Nauseating pain.

“Mommy!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” If I can scream loud enough, she'll come. She'll find me, and she won't die. As Sam pulls me out of the trance, I watch the red slice marks seal up into fine white scars on my palms like magic.

But I am still calling out for my mommy.