Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar (37 page)

“The Beast is having lunch.”

That's the best she can do? This woman does not have kids.

“Where's he having lunch?”

“In the castle.”

“The castle isn't real,” Sal says from the sidelines. In my head, I tag a “Bitch, please” to her sentence.

Belle looks at Bea. “I can tell him hello for you.”

“Okay.” Bea smiles at Belle, and walks back to us, shrugging her shoulders.

James picks her up and puts her on his shoulders. He's smiling. Kids can have that effect on you—pulling you out of your own headspace to save you from yourself. Reminding you that they're always able to steal 100 percent of your attention away from whatever bullshit your mind is running full throttle through the hamster wheel.

“Guess Belle doesn't eat lunch with the Beast,” Bea muses.

Henry grabs my hand as we start to walk away from the princesses.

“Man”—he turns to me, shielding the sunlight from his eyes—“it costs a lot of money to find out everyone is lying.”

“Drink.”

I take the kids' water bottles out of my bag outside the bathroom where they've just emptied their bladders. If I make sure they all drink together, I can keep them all on the same pee schedule. That's important stuff when you travel in a pack.

“Okay. When I'm done counting, you're done drinking. Go!”

They drink.

“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven. Okay, seven is good.”

“Mom, you are weird. But I know there's a method to your madness.” Sal pats my shoulder and collects the water bottles, putting them back in the bag.

“Are you sure you don't want to go on the Indiana Jones ride?” I ask James one last time before we use our fast passes to cut in front of the eighty-minute line of a thousand people sweating in the sun.

“No, you go. Have fun.” He kisses me. “Bea and I are going to climb the tree house.”

Henry gets behind the fake steering wheel of our fake Indiana Jones Jeep and privately air punches toward the floorboards.

“You gonna drive this thing for us, kid?” an older, balding man asks, sweating through his brown polo shirt as he climbs into the row behind Sal, Henry, and me.

“Yeah!” Henry yells back, tossing Sweaty Polo a thumbs-up. The sound track to the ride begins.

“You trust him?” the man asks Sal, giving me that parent-to-parent wink.

“No.” She laughs, and as we make our way through the ride I suddenly feel a weird sense of community with the other parents in our fake Jeep, helmed by my unskilled and vomit-prone son. All of us laughing and
whoa-
ing together. All of us spending more money than we should, gambling on a chance to create memories in this place built on make-believe. The best parts of childhood, adulthood, and parenthood are those pure moments of bliss, when you completely forget about your future and past and live in your moment. That, I realize, is why I loved Disneyland as a preteen: it was an escape from that time, from the fears of never getting my period, of being pressured into trying cigarettes, and of liking
Days of Our Lives
. That's why there are moms who are itching to dress up like Snow White for an entire day, in public, with zero shame. It's the best kind of lie. To stop thinking about the shit in our lives for a day and pretend that a princess is real, that the Beast is in the castle, and that they never take off their costumes or meet for some crappy cafeteria lunch and a cigarette behind the facade walls of Main Street.

The end of the ride is just approaching when the Jeep suddenly stops, the sound track cuts out, and all the lights come on.

Henry's hands fly off the wheel. “I didn't do it!”

“The ride broke down,” Sal says, a slight worry in her voice.

I'm relieved. “I am so glad it didn't break down when the boulder was coming at us. At least we're near the exit.”

Sweaty Polo Winker replies, “Yeah, but now we're stuck here, looking at the exit.”

“We should just get out and go.” I'm not even going to hesitate on this one.

Henry agrees with me. He starts fiddling with his seat belt. “Let's go, then.”

“But wait!” Sal isn't unbuckling with us. “They told us not to get out of our Jeep until we're at the end. How will we get out of the trench?”

I look ahead and see three sets of emergency stairs up to the exit platform.

“We're only two Jeeps back from the end,” I argue back. “We're gonna do this! You coming?” I ask the man in the sweaty polo shirt. He turns to his teen daughter, then back to me, nodding. “Let the boy lead. He's done a great job so far.” Then he gives Henry the man-to-man wink.

I turn to Sal. “I know you hate breaking the rules, but we don't need to be held prisoner on a broken ride! Come on, it'll be fun to run to those stairs. We can pretend we're all Indiana Joneses!”

Polo Shirt is right on board with me, living the fantasy. “Let's go!”

And then, without notice, the ride starts up again.

“Oh.” I'm bummed.

The Jeep pulls up to an uninterested ride operator, who presses a button to unlock our seat belts. It's like a slap in the face.

“We couldn't have done it anyhow,” Henry says dejectedly.

“Oh, Henry, it's okay. Sal was right, it was against the rules anyway. But I would have done it!”

Sweaty Polo pats me on the shoulder. “You're fun. I would've done it with you. Good mom. Take care.”

We wind our way out of the long ride area and out under Tarzan's Treehouse.

“MOMMMM! SAL!! HEN!!!” We all turn our heads at the sound of Bea's voice and see her and James, smiling up in the tree house. The three of us run up the stairs to them.

 

Henry and Sal are ecstatic.

“DAD, THERE WAS A SNAKE THAT POPPED OUT AND SCARED SAL SO MUCH!”

“AND THE BOULDER CAME AFTER US AND THE RIDE DIED AT THE END AND I AM SO HAPPY THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN AT THE PART WITH THE SNAKE OR THE BOULDER!”

“SOME OLD SWEATY MAN KEPT TALKING TO US!”

I pick Bea up and turn to James. “There are no people in this tree house. It's, like, us and Tarzan.”

“Too many stairs. People don't want to exercise here. Most people here are physically incapable of climbing these stairs.”

“You into it now?”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I was just freaking out. In a different headspace. Bea and I are having fun.”

“Can we go in those giant teacups now?” Sal asks. “Like, from those dorky Disneyland commercials?”

“Sure,” he says. “After Bea is done up here, we'll get some churros and go in the teacups.” James is back. He's planning and ready for action. The kids run around the tree house, laughing and yelling, and James and I look out over the people walking below us, moving together slowly, like cattle. James reaches into the bag and gives me a water.

“Don't dehydrate like some dummy. Drink.”

I drink.

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THANK YOU:

James, for being base Maslow, always. The people who came out of my body, for reminding me we aren't born with thought filters: Sal, Henry, and Bea. My mom, for always asking me where I was with the book, and my dad, for never asking. Angela, for being extra eyes and a memory box of things I'd forgotten. Aimee, for living. My sister, Lauren, also for living but mostly for asking when the book parties would be. Kate Cassaday, for using a computer to edit—instead of a fucking pencil (who edits with pencils?)—and therefore uprooting her entire work process when I asked her to. Cal Morgan, for always being a talking head wearing a bow tie in my mind. Without Kate and Cal's (annoying) prodding (mostly Kate, super-naggy) and strong sense of humor (both equally funny—I'm a mom, I know how to word this), my book wouldn't be as good. Erin Malone, for being the woman in my corner holding the towel and spraying water all over my face. Jhoni Marchinko, for telling me all of this made sense. Molly McNearney and Jimmy Kimmel, for letting me live with them for twenty years. And finally my publishers, for being so smart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelly Oxford
started writing at five years old when she penciled “I had a baby” into her Hello Kitty diary, and she hasn't stopped since. She now writes words that companies like Warner Bros., CBS, and NBC have bought for film and television, and magazines like GQ have published. You can read more of her words online in places like Twitter (@kellyoxford) and Tumblr (kellyoxford.tumblr.com). Born in Edmonton, Canada, she currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children, who all wish they weren't in this book.

Available from HarperAudio and HarperCollins e-books

COPYRIGHT

EVERYTHING IS PERFECT WHEN YOU
'
RE A LIAR
. Copyright © 2013 by Kelly Oxford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyright material: “Both Sides Now.” Words and Music by Joni Mitchell. © 1967 (Renewed) Crazy Crow Music. All Rights Administered by Sony/ATY Music Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Alfred Music Publishing.

ISBN 978-0-06-210222-5

EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780062102249

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