The Comfort of Lies (30 page)

Last week Max melted down when they were late to Little League practice. “Dad would have gotten me here on time!” he’d shouted before marching away. Three days later, she overheard Lucas tell Max he was an asshole for siding with Nathan.

Siding? Worse yet, Juliette had been so weary that she pretended she didn’t hear.

She exited the Mass Pike, gripping the wheel as she drove onto the Taconic State Parkway, a road where deer often darted from the woods. She wasn’t used to being both driver and watcher any more than being both mother and father.

Nathan saw the boys often, which was good for them, but every
visit in the weeks since he’d left brought her pain. Having him ring the doorbell instead of using his key just about killed her. Max shuffled out to the car wearing careful comb marks in his hair, while Lucas dressed sloppier every week.

Each time Juliette saw Nathan, she watched for signs that would tell her what to do.

Had he gone to her?

Did he love her?

If he and that woman got together, would they take Savannah back and become their own little family?

Not that Juliette thought it worked that way. Adopting a child wasn’t like borrowing a snow blower. “Oh, we’d prefer you give that back now, please.”

“Mom, are we there yet?” Max asked.

“If we were there, would we still be on the Taconic?” she answered.

“You don’t have to snap at him,” Lucas said.

After Nathan left, Lucas appointed himself Juliette’s judge and conscience as he tried to fill the father role. She glanced in the rearview mirror. He had a new crop of blemishes. Max’s hair was so short that he looked like a war victim. His last haircut had been a disaster.

She shook her head at seeing her sons through her own mother’s hypercritical eyes. Juliette never felt worse than when she found herself adopting her mother’s harsh views.

“How about we go to the fair tonight?” Juliette wanted to make it up to them for being sad and short tempered. “We’ll be in Rhinebeck by three.”

“You’re kidding, right? You think I want to pet sheep?” Lucas asked.

“I want to go,” Max said.

“Then go, fat burger.”

“Don’t say that,” Juliette said. “We’ll all go, or none of us go.”

“All of us? All
three
of us?” Lucas’s sneering tone would drive her crazy or drive her off the road in a fit of guilt-laced rage.

“Grandpa and Mamie may want to go.” Juliette held the steering
wheel with one hand and reached behind with the other hand cupped. “M&M’s, please.”

“Yeah, right. Mamie will love that idea.” Lucas pressed his feet so hard on the back of her seat that Juliette swore she felt the tips of his sneakers.

“Max?” Juliette shook her hand impatiently and again took a quick look in the rearview mirror. Max held up a giant bag of M&M’s and poured the candy into her hand. They’d bought it at CVS before getting on the Mass Pike, adding it to the chips in a can, spray cheese, and three kinds of soda she’d already put in the basket. Nothing she’d brought on the trip was organic, nutritious, or homemade, making it seem like their car belonged to an entirely different family.

Juliette shoved the candy in her mouth. Shells cracked, grainy chocolate coated her tongue, and she felt a moment’s relief.

 • • • 

She pulled into the driveway beside her parents’ perfect blue-grey Queen Anne–style house.

Juliette still felt as though she competed with this house for her parents’ consideration. Each time the house’s stately white balusters got a glossy new coat of paint, she had the urge to carve her initials into the gleaming wood.

It irked Juliette how her parents had trusted every one of her actions and choices since she was a child. There were only a few things her parents checked on. Her father made sure that first her bikes, and then her cars, were in good order, and her mother kept watch over Juliette’s beauty—making it clear that she considered Juliette an extension of her own loveliness.

Displaying some rebellious spirit, at least enough to worry her parents, might have brought relief, but she seemed destined to be the vigilant one in the family. Her parents were the ones who stumbled after too many drinks. They were the ones performing not-furtive-enough experiments with marijuana when Juliette was seventeen and should have been the one getting stoned. Watching them giggle their way to the bedroom had turned her stomach.

“Lucas, get the large bag from the back,” Juliette ordered.

Lucas struggled to pull her overstuffed suitcase from the trunk. “Jeez, Mom, what the hell do you have in here?”

Juliette started to scold him for swearing and then stopped. If she was going to ask him to do Nathan’s jobs—carry the heavy bags, check the tires before they got on the road—then she might as well let him complain like Nathan.

Sliding down the slope of bad parenting took no time at all.

“Max, you take your and Lucas’s backpacks.” Juliette knelt on the backseat, reaching for the few snacks they hadn’t stuffed in their mouths and cramming the remains in wrinkled plastic bags. These she pushed deep into her parents’ outside trash bins.

 • • • 

Juliette recognized the depth of her parents’ concern over Nathan’s absence when they offered to take her and the boys to the county fair. Her mother and father took her to the antiques show at the fairgrounds when she was a child, but never the county fair. “Why would I want to see cows?” That had been her mother’s point of view. “Your school takes you, right?” That had been her father’s way of alleviating his guilt.

“Grandpa,” Max said, pulling at her father’s arm, “can we get fried dough?”

“Darling! Why in the world would you want that? Grandpa and I are planning to take us all to Gigi’s tonight.” Juliette’s mother turned to Juliette and gave her a familiar once-over. “The food is wonderful, but it’s casual. No need to dress up or fuss.”

Juliette’s mother wore the same style of clothes as during Juliette’s childhood. Perhaps they were the same clothes; her mother remained the same size. If a shirt or skirt wanted to make it into Sondra’s closet, it had best complement her dancer’s body and bring to mind Audrey Hepburn.

“A little fried dough once in a while won’t hurt the boys,” Juliette’s father said.

“But it might hurt you.” Her mother gave a significant glance
to his midsection and then kissed him full on the lips. “I need you around more than you need the cholesterol.” She patted him on the butt with a flirtatious grin, and Juliette thought she might throw up from having to once again witness—with her boys, no less—her parents’ constant displays of affection.

“Eww,” Max said.

Lucas walked away, pretending to be fascinated by a bulky white horse lumbering toward them.

Her father laughed and then stage-whispered, “Tell you what, Maxie. What happens between grandfather and grandson stays between grandfather and grandson. Right, boys?”

“Does that mean yes?” Max asked.

“That means it’s time to take our leave.” He flung an arm around Max’s neck. “Come on, Lucas.”

Lucas looked at Juliette and then shrugged, walking away as though choosing the lesser of two versions of hell. She watched with mixed feelings as they left. Alone with her father, the boys would get more attention. Unfortunately, so would she.

“Fried dough. My God, what is he thinking? You’ll see how your father suffers later. And, of course, how I suffer with him.” She tucked her arm in Juliette’s. “Come. Let’s see if we can find anything that doesn’t smell or offend.”

Juliette hated her mother’s casual dismissal of an entire cultural happening. She hated it more that she, Juliette, also loathed the damned fair.

“So, no Nathan.” Sondra led them away from the animal corrals, which were divided into horrifying lines of pigs, cows, bunnies, and goats. The place was an animal prison.

“You look great, Mom,” Juliette said. “So does Dad.” This was true. At seventy and sixty-eight, either of them could pass for ten years younger.

“Don’t change the subject. However, thank you. We try to stay in shape, though I have to watch him every second.” Her mother gave the fond smile she reserved for Juliette’s father.

“I use your picture as a model of good skin care for all my clients,” Juliette said. That was a total lie. The last thing she needed was her mother’s picture staring down at her all day, but Juliette was well schooled in the art of deflecting her mother from topics Juliette wanted to avoid. Talking about her mother’s youthfulness might keep away the subject of Nathan.

“That’s flattering, sweetheart. You look nice also. Although, truthfully, you’ve put on some weight. You’re at that age, you know.”

When Juliette didn’t respond, Juliette’s mother sighed. “Sweetheart, I know that it’s because of Nathan. Women go in one direction or the other when their husbands leave. Most of my friends got thin as rails, but some just started stuffing themselves and didn’t stop. Honey, is that the road you’ve taken?”

The road she’d taken. As though Juliette had casually deliberated between staying slim or putting on weight.
Fat or skinny, fat or skinny? Oh, why don’t I just get plump as a pigeon? That will be fun!

The sweet smell of cotton candy drifted over.

“He didn’t leave,” Juliette said. “I threw him out.”

Her mother looked shocked, as though Nathan were such a catch that only the most foolish woman would let him go.

“Why in the world—”

“I’m hungry.” Juliette unlocked her arm from her mother’s. “I’m getting a hamburger. Over there.” She pointed to a shack where teenagers flipped burgers and shook baskets of fries. Juliette hungered for the grease, the salty meat, and the blood-soaked bun.

“Oh, no. Not that, Juliette. Perhaps there’s a salad around here somewhere.” She put her hands on her hips—her lean boyish hips; nothing like the monsters jutting out from either side of Juliette.

“I don’t want a salad. I want something substantial.”

“Let’s save ourselves for tonight, at Gigi’s, where at least they’ll be worth the calories, okay?” Her mother gave a girlish smile, crinkling her Midwestern blue eyes and swinging her long fringe of blond bangs out of her eyes.

“Mom, don’t be such a cliché. It’s not like you.” This intense scrutiny
was curious for her mother. Usually after a few pointed remarks, her mother just went on about herself and Juliette’s father. “Gordon said this.” “We went here.”

Her mother’s chittery-chattery expression dropped away. “Cliché? Fine, perhaps I’m a cliché, but you need direction. You need to take care of yourself. Sorry to be blunt, but honey, looking good is your business. What have you done, eaten nothing but chips and cookies since he left?”

“Did you not hear me say I threw him out?”

“It’s not always about who did the throwing. The question is why you made him go.” Her mother stopped walking and took Juliette’s hands between hers, forcing Juliette to look straight at her. “Maybe I wasn’t mother of the year, but I do care about you.”

“I don’t doubt that.” She did doubt that.

“Take my advice under serious consideration. It’s no picnic out there without a man.”

“It was no picnic in there either, Mother.”

“Why? Did he sleep with someone else?”

“Mom!”

“Don’t act so surprised. What? You think it never happened to my friends? But not to me. Do you want to know why?”

“No,” Juliette said.

“Because I’ve kept your father front and center. He’s my life, and he knows it.”

“We all knew it.”

“Don’t be such a child.”

“Once I
was
a child, Mom.”

“But you’re not anymore. This isn’t about poor, ignored baby Juliette. Grow up. You want to take care of your children better than I did? Get their father back.”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“So tell me. But try listening to me like a woman, not my daughter.”

“Is that even possible?”

“It is if you can rise to the occasion.” Her mother pulled her under
one of the food tents. People sat at long wooden tables eating every manner of forbidden food. Children nibbled at corn dripping with butter. Men bent over plates full of barbequed meat red with sauce and brown with grill marks. Women clutched burritos the size of small puppies.

Next to Juliette, a sunburned woman ran her tongue up a mountain of ice cream heaped into a cone. Juliette noticed the thick slab of fat hanging over the woman’s jeans and felt superior and then ashamed. She was just her mom with a veneer.

Her mother dug into her straw bag and took out two bottles of water, offering one to Juliette.

The sunburned woman was about Juliette’s age. She sat with a companion who had thirty pounds on Ms. Sunburn, and whose complexion spoke of sugar and whiskey.

Juliette took the water with gratitude. “He cheated on me.”

“I figured. That’s what I said to your father, though he tried to defend Nathan.”

“Dad defended him?”

Her mother touched Juliette’s arm. “Oh, Juliette, don’t worry about that. Your father is simply worried about you being alone, so he blusters a bit.”

“Dad didn’t believe Nathan would cheat?”

“Dad doesn’t like to think ill of people. Come on, let’s walk—I can’t stand the smell here.”

Her mother brushed a drop of water from her yellow linen slacks. Mom showed her age in odd ways, like her refusal to wear white before Memorial Day. Still, even as Mom closed in on seventy, and Juliette ran a business where women paid large sums for her beauty secrets, she felt homely and oafish next to her mother.

Her mother flicked Juliette’s hair from her face. “You remind me of your father. He’s always thinking the best, always trying to convince me how marvelous the world is. Maybe that’s why Nathan got away with cheating for however long you let him. You thought too well of him. It didn’t even occur to you that he could be doing that.”

When Juliette didn’t respond, her mother added iron to her
words. “Look at you, weepy and getting chunky, waiting for Nathan to come to his senses. To make his decision.”

“I’m not doing that!” Was her mother right? Hadn’t she told him to find out if he loved that woman? To go see the child? “Fine. You’re right, Mom. You’re right about everything. But there’s a small detail you don’t know. He had a child.”