The Comfort of Lies (13 page)

Bobby raised his glass. “To our first fight.”

Tia cringed at his words. She raised her glass. “To your first million.”

 • • • 

Tia slunk past Katie’s desk, ignoring her glare and theatrical glance at her watch. Katie considered tardiness a major character flaw.

Katie didn’t ask how Tia’s weekend had been, and Tia didn’t ask how the new wallpaper in Katie’s bathroom had turned out. Despite the fact that their desks were at right angles, forcing them to work hard to avoid staring at each other all day, they performed a well-rehearsed dance of pretending they possessed a modicum of privacy.

After a morning of client meetings and endless phone calls up and down the ranks of city and state bureaucracies, Tia shuffled through papers on her desk until she found her growing to-do list on a lined yellow pad. She refused to commit the list to her computer, because once it went electronic, she couldn’t crumple, rip, shred, or otherwise remove it from the earth like she could paper. Didn’t they show that on
Law & Order
all the time? Deleted folders apparently lived in tiny wrinkles and crevices of computers that nontech mortals never found.

March To-Do:

Apt inspection for Mrs. Jankowicz

Possible homes for Grahams?

Roundtable meeting—host in April

Remind Katie of inter-agency Senior Fair

Walker Foundation Grant

AA for Jerry Conlin—find JP meetings

Mr. O’Hara eating?

Tia stared at the list. She updated it by crossing out “March” and writing “April” on top of the page.

Tia wished she could spend her days taking her clients to fun places.
Here you go, Mrs. G, we’re having lunch on Newbury Street! Look Mr. O’Malley, time to check out the new Grisham from the library! Hey, Mrs. Kuffel, a new Adam Sandler film!

Mrs. Kuffel was eighty-nine, lived alone, and Adam Sandler was her celebrity pretend grandson.

Tia loved her clients but hated too much of her job. She hated the constant paperwork, the reports, the interagency bullshit, and
the grant applications her boss Richard passed down the line to her and Katie.

Richard’s laziness strained Katie’s and Tia’s workload. He tested their patience daily. Tia was convinced that Richard had worked exactly hard enough to reach his position only so that he could then put his feet up on the desk and do next to nothing. Tia believed those “morning meetings” that kept him out of the office until noon or later were appointments with his computer, caving in to his fantasy football addiction.

Katie rustled around, and Tia ignored her.

“I’m leaving,” Katie said.

Her clipped words drove a nail into Tia’s growing headache. She looked up to see Katie wrapped in her trench coat, sunglasses in hand, ready to ward off both rain and wrinkle-inducing rays.

“You have a meeting?” Tia asked.

“I have to see Natasha’s teacher.”

Tia simply stared, saying nothing, leading Katie into a rush of defensive words.

“She’s had issues with unexplained fears. I don’t know what’s going on. She’s had night terrors. Been stuffing herself with food. In secret. I found an entire sleeve of Chips Ahoy! under her bed.”

Tia ached at the thought of the little girl, but her jealousy at Katie’s being able to worry out loud about her daughter overwhelmed the ache and brought out Tia’s lesser self. “When will you be back?”

“Come back?” Katie stuck her sunglasses on top of her head, pushing back her perfectly Newbury Street styled hair. “By the time I got back, it would be time to leave.”

“Why’d you make the appointment so early?” Tia wanted to stop the flow of bitchy words, but she couldn’t help herself. Her mother kept telling her to watch her temper. But she never learned, did she? “One day,” her mother had said. “One day it will be too late.”

“For goodness’ sake, you waltzed in here at, like, ten o’clock.” Katie pulled her coat tight.

“It was nine thirty, and I fully intend to work until five thirty. Plus, I have a late meeting with a client. A home visit,” Tia lied.

“What’s wrong with you?” Katie asked. “This is important, my appointment.”

Tia completely agreed with Katie. What
was
wrong with her? Why couldn’t she stop doing this?

“Anyway, isn’t Richard coming in?” Katie asked.

Tia screwed her face into an expression indicating the pointlessness of thinking that might be a possibility. “You know how hard it is to handle the phones alone
and
try to get work done.” She shook her to-do list at Katie. “Look at this list.”

“Tia, you don’t understand the strain I’m under. Why are you doing this?”

Tia shut herself off from Katie’s accusatory eyes. Tia had gone too far. Another thing her mother had tried to teach her: “Tia, don’t try to make other people look bad so you look better. Just be a better girl, honey.”

Tia’s mother had a natural kindness even when she was too exhausted to do anything particularly nice. Tia worried that her own personality had come from her father’s side. Her mother called his family a bitter-edged bunch. She didn’t want to be bitter-edged. “Sorry, Katie. I . . . I’m sorry.”

“Motherhood isn’t a side job. Maybe someday you’ll understand.” Katie lifted her pocketbook higher on her shoulder and turned away.

“Oh, forget about it,” Tia muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Just go, okay?” In truth, Tia was thrilled to see Katie leave. She wanted to be alone.

“This is an office, not a bar. You need to remember that. If I have to, I’ll talk to Richard about this. I can’t have you take out your nasty moods on me.”

“Come, on, Katie. We all get in moods around here.”

“Not like you do. I mean it, Tia. I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you better watch your step.”

 • • • 

Two hours later, Tia heard a knock on the wall outside her open office door. Before she could answer, Richard peeked in, showing first his shaggy head of hair, then his thick glasses and scruffy beard. Richard still lived sometime around 1979—even staying true to aged leather sandals that drew one’s eyes right to the disgusting sight of his hairy toes.

“I hear you gave Katie a hard time.” Richard crossed his arms over his paunch. “She called me almost in tears.”

“Did you hear that she left at lunchtime and stuck me with everything?”

“She told me she had a thing with the kids.” Richard looked at her over his smudged glasses.

“She made an appointment with her daughter’s teacher. Why couldn’t she schedule it later?”

Tia’s whining embarrassed her. She sounded like a fifth grader telling on someone. Besides, Richard was the king of leaving early. As far as Richard was concerned, if they met with their clients and didn’t set fires in the trash cans, everything was A-OK.

Richard took a deep breath. “I think you know I try to run this agency in a caring way. I extend to you the same understanding and flexibility as I do to Katie.”

Tia slammed her pen down. “I’m sick of kids being an excuse for anything and everything. The holy mantle of motherhood comes up, and it’s ‘Take over, Tia. Katie has to change a diaper!’ ”

Richard looked puzzled and wary. “Parenthood requires certain sacrifices.”

“Why do I always have to be the one to sacrifice?”

Richard looked at the silent phone, at Katie’s immaculate desk, and Tia’s pile of papers. “Are you overloaded?”

“That’s not the point.” Tia thought she might cry from not knowing what the point was.

Richard closed his eyes and stood very still for a moment, as though he were going into some yogi trance. With his eyes still closed, he said, “Why don’t you go home? Take the rest of the day off. I’ll handle the phones.”

CHAPTER 11

Tia

The scene with Katie and Richard replayed in a loop as Tia hunched against the wind. Once again she’d gotten caught up in the drama of her own anger. Nathan hated when she got in this mood. It was a stylized fight: She’d lash out at him for not being able to commit to her, and then he’d put up his hands, palms out, stagy as hell, as though to ward her off.

They’d been together two months when she first started asking about his so-called intentions. She was still asking when he left her a year after they met. Maybe she’d pushed too early, too much.

“Let it go for the moment,” he’d repeat. “Just let us be. It will work out.”

Looking back, she wondered how she could have been so naïve. Love had blinded her to the obvious meaning of his words: “Please shut up and join me in denial.”

She’d been convinced that he loved her. Had it been her imagination?

“I never meant to fall in love with you,” he’d once said.

“What did you mean to do?” Was he saying that, in fact, he didn’t love her, and never meant to? Her smile had been stiff with worry. She’d loved him right from the beginning. Smart. Protective. Passionate
about his work; about the world. Nathan was a style of man she’d never known. By conversation and car, he took her to exotic places she’d never known existed so close to Southie.

How did he get the time to take her to places like the Fruitlands Museum in Lincoln? Had he been so drawn to her that he’d overcome his guilt at leaving his wife and sons for an entire day, or simply wanted an escape from them?

Shouldn’t he have been at the beach with them, rather than spending time with her at Fruitlands, the short-lived once-communal home of Louisa May Alcott’s family?

Tia had worked hard to push away those thoughts on that hot July afternoon. She’d spread out the blanket Nathan told her to pack. He laid out his offerings of fruit, cheese, and crackers as he explained transcendentalism. Like the ideas he offered, the food he brought was new to her parochial tastes. Sensuous slices of papaya replaced the crunch of apples. Gorgonzola spread on crostini seemed unrelated to the Swiss cheese on Ritz crackers she’d eaten since childhood.

“These days, people hold weddings here,” he said. “Back then, when it was formed, this place was incredibly radical. A commune. A place where they’d plan to separate themselves from the economics of the country, grow their own food, make all their goods—and practice what they preached.”

Tia knew Nathan wanted her to ask questions. He loved showing off his knowledge, which was fine with her. It excited her to see how much he knew. “And what did they preach?”

“It’s one of the harder movements to define, but in a nutshell, it was a move toward the spiritual.” Nathan crossed his legs and became even more intent. “It was meant as a break from what they viewed as the materialism of society at the time, with a core belief in intuition versus dogma.”

“And this is where she grew up, Louisa May Alcott?”

“Actually, her family only stayed for about seven months, but those seven months really marked them.”

She wiped her hands clean of papaya juice and lay back on the
soft Tartan wool. Only one pure white cloud broke the clean blue sky. Nathan lay beside her and took her hand. She traced the calloused ridge along his right index finger. “From marking papers,” he’d joke when she called his hands masculine.

Rolling on her side, she offered the small swell of her hip. He traced the line of her thigh with his fingers.

She’d cried the first time they’d made love.

“What’s wrong?” he’d asked while wiping the tears from her cheek. “Did I hurt you? Did I make you sad?”

“It’s because you made me happy.” She didn’t know how to explain her fear that she’d never be able to hold on to the happiness she’d just found. “I don’t know where this can go.”

And for the first time of many times, he’d said, “Let it go”—kindly, but still the words hurt. He’d asked the impossible, as though she had any control over the monkeys who started to chatter in her head from the first time he left her apartment.

Monkey number one said the same thing any random Southie woman would say if Tia stopped her on the street:

He’ll never leave her.

He’s feeding you a line of bull.

Monkey number two was Tia’s mother.

Honey, what you’re doing is a sin.

Why don’t you find a good man, one who doesn’t lie and cheat? Do you think your face will last forever? Claim your prize while you still have bait.

Monkey number three had been Nathan’s wife.

Why can’t you leave us alone?

He loves me. You’re simply a diversion.

The monkeys made Tia a dirty girl; they’d flung their monkey crap all over her until she reeked.

Now, years later, new monkeys had appeared. Nuns who judged her from the corners of their eyes. Righteous mothers pushing strollers. Ogling men who knew she deserved no better than being their personal eye candy.

Hey, baby, give Daddy some sugar.

You know who gives away a child? Whores and bitches. Indulgent, selfish women.

I think Honor’s crying for you, Tia. Hear her?

Tia took out her cell phone and dialed Robin.

“Geez, I just opened the door to the shop a second ago,” her friend answered. “What’s up?”

“I need you,” Tia said. “Can’t you come home for a visit?”

“I keep telling you, Tee, I am home. Why don’t you come here?”

That Tia had never flown made her seem so insular and townie, she could tell nobody except Robin. Tia was certain flying would be like the one and only time she’d been on a roller coaster, when she might as well have been hurtled through space, but Robin pushed her, believing that Tia should grit her teeth and move through her fear.

“I need you,” Tia repeated.

“I’m here.” When Tia didn’t answer, Robin gave a soft sigh right into Tia’s ear. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t get anywhere,” Tia said. “No matter what I do, I’m standing in the same place.”