Lies of the Heart Page 9

  Jerry thinks he did a good thing. He thinks he saved Nick.

  In an instant all the whys inside her head doubled, tripled—killing Nick was good? Jerry wanted to save him? From what? And then always back to this, the fear coiling up tightly inside her: Where do I fit into this picture, into that day in the gym?

  She swerves into her driveway, nearly slams into the rear of her parents’ gray Chevy; she backs up, tires spinning and shooting rocks out into the street, and then pulls alongside their car.

  Her mother is in the passenger seat, arms crossed, her platinum wig almost touching the roof of the car. Her eyes are stuck on the windshield, lips pressed tightly together: the perfect picture of parental indignation. upset, Katie assumes, because she hung up on her earlier.

  “Way to pick your battles, Mom,” she mumbles. She grabs the bag of ice cream, shoulders the car door open, almost falls out onto the slick rocks.

  Her shoes slip and slide as she charges past the Chevy and up the walkway toward her father, who is packed into his bulky blue Eskimo coat, the brown fur around the hood framing his long, angular face. He digs into a bag of rock salt with a blue plastic cup, spreads it generously onto the bottom stair.

  “Just in case,” her father booms, holding up the bag with a gloved hand.

  She pushes past him onto the stairs, the salt crunching underfoot. “It isn’t a good time,” Katie says in a strained voice.

  “Took the driveway there a bit quick, didn’t you, sweetie?”

  She whirls around on her father from the top step, her warm breath exploding into the frosty air. “It’s barely snowing, Dad!” she shouts at him. She swipes at the thick coat of salt with the side of her shoe. “What the hell?”

  Katie’s heart sinks at the shocked look on her father’s face, her fury instantly evaporating. She lowers her head apologetically at this betrayal—she’s the one who doesn’t yell, the one with infinite patience for him, the one who listens and nods and never questions his actions, no matter what. She inhales deeply, feels the cold air enter her lungs. Counts to three.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she says in a choked voice, turning away and ramming her key into the front door.

  “It was your mother’s idea,” her father says behind her in an unusually quiet, confidential tone. “She insisted we come over. Got me out of my pj’s and everything.”

  Katie turns back to her father. He motions with the plastic cup toward the idling Chevy. Her mother hasn’t moved an inch, but her window is a quarter of the way down now. Katie skips her eyes to the dark street, to a patch of melting snow glistening under the streetlight.

  “She’s worried, sweetie,” her father says, his hazel eyes slanting up at her.

  Katie isn’t sure what’s worse, the curious, greedy stares of strangers and reporters, or this—a wounded look of love from her dad, who stands shivering on her walkway. She looks at her front lawn, at the wet tips of grass that sparkle and bend. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks to be let in, short, mournful pleas that echo into the night.

  “Dad, I didn’t mean it—”

  Her father holds up one finger, wiggles his nose; he lets go of a string of noisy sneezes with gusto. Pulls a white handkerchief from his coat pocket.

  “Bless you,” Katie says.

  He nods, trumpets loudly into the hankie. “Tough day, huh?” he says, swiping the cloth back and forth under his nose.

  “Yeah.”

  Her father stares intently at her for exactly two seconds, and then his face does that thing it always does when anyone around him shows too much emotion: it fills with alarm, then almost as quickly shifts to a look of pure concentration—eyes suddenly heavy-lidded and trained on a spot on the ground. It’s your father’s “need to split the check” look, Nick used to say, and then he’d scrunch up his face like her father’s and scratch his chin with his index finger. Let’s see, twenty-four fifty for my veal parm and Grace’s shrimp scampi . . .

  Her father slowly folds his handkerchief into a square, his long fingers smoothing the cloth with each crease. After he makes a fold, he strokes the cloth carefully, uses his index finger to make a crease for another fold. The movements are exact and meticulous, soothing in their repetition.

  Although the snow hasn’t quite stopped, there is a stillness in the air, a motionless calm that falls around them. It suddenly feels okay, standing here now and watching her father’s precise motions, like the world has finally shut down for the night, has closed in around her and her parents and these small, deliberate gestures; a respite, then, into something solid, into familiar relationships that aren’t perfect, but recognizable and constant. For the first time today, she feels the muscles in her lower back give a little.

  She smiles at the reverent way her father finally offers her the square of cloth when he’s done pressing it. Katie shakes her head no, shifts the grocery bag onto her forearm. Her father’s face brightens, eyes locking onto the bag as he stuffs the hankie back into his pocket. He clears his throat, winks at her.

  “You know,” he begins in his normally loud voice again, “you can always freeze that bread. Your mother does it all the time. No harm in it, and we always have it when it snows and we can’t get out.” Her father peeks over at the car, and Katie turns, sees her mother nodding in agreement from inside.

  Katie turns back to her father, to the hopeful look he gives her. It’s the same one he’s used since she and Dana were children, the one that says, Why not just get it over with so we can all move on?

  “Okay,” she says, “I’m going.” She drops her purse and the grocery bag onto the heaping salt, takes small, crunchy steps down the stairs.

  “Good girl,” he says, patting her arm.

  By the time she gets to the car, the window is rolled back up. She listens to the motor rev from the heater kicking on, watches her mother stare stonily ahead. Fat snowflakes sputter onto the windshield and instantly melt into tiny puddles. From a few houses away, the dog barks again, this time more urgently, a steady stream of indignant yelps.

  Katie leans in until her face is only inches from her mother’s on the other side of the window. She taps the glass twice with a fingernail. Her mother turns her head, stares at her with raised eyebrows. She rolls down the window.

  “Kate,” she says in a crisp, matter-of-fact tone.

  “Mom,” Katie says, matching her tone exactly.

  Her mother leans back, startled. “Oh, no, do not mock me in this moment, Kate,” she says, “you don’t want to do that.” She pulls the collar closed on her coat.

  “Sorry,” Katie says. “And I’m sorry about earlier, too. Okay?”

  Her mother lifts her chin. “For what?”

  “I’m sorry for hanging up on you, Mom.”

  “It wasn’t right.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  Her mother nods, finally appeased. She shifts her body all the way around to face Katie. “It’s just rude, hon.”

  “I know.”

  “Your father was beside himself,” her mother says.

  Katie turns to check on her father, who is slowly salting his way back down the walk. The layer of salt, even thicker than the one on the top stair, twinkles in the light. He sees Katie watching, grins and raises the plastic cup like he’s making a toast to her.

  Her mother scoots Katie out of the way with her hand, leans out the window. Her wig shifts up on the left, and she tugs it back down, shakes her head impatiently.

  “Not so thick, Jimmy,” she calls out. “We aren’t in a blizzard, for God’s sake.”

  She rolls her eyes at Katie. “More is always better with that one.”

  Her mother gives her a lopsided smile, reaches up to tuck Katie’s hair behind one ear.

  “Mom—”

  “No, hold on,” her mother says. She dips her head toward the driver’s side. “Hop in.”

  Katie walks around the front of the car, slips into the driver’s seat. She shuts the door behind her, feels the heat press into h
er like a thick woolen blanket—it must be a hundred degrees inside the car.

  “Whoa,” Katie says, and reaches for the heater before remembering how cold her mother gets these days, an aftereffect of the chemo even though her last session was nearly five years ago. “Doctor says her internal temp is off, probably permanent,” her father told Katie over the phone last month when it first started to get chilly at night. “But everything’s good. Blood work, levels, everything,” he said. “Except this cold thing.” And then, in a loud, magnified voice meant for her mother: “But I told the doc, ‘Hell, we’ll take her any way she comes, hot or cold.’ ”

  “You can turn the heat down a little if you want,” her mother says, motioning to the dashboard, “Or crack your window.”

  Katie rolls the window open a little, unzips her coat and stares at her mother’s wig, which has shifted up on the left again.

  “This one never stays put,” her mother complains. She slaps down the visor, tugs both sides of the wig, and scans her face in the mirror.

  Though neither one would admit it, her mother and sister are alike in so many respects that it amazes Katie at times. The way they move and behave even in small moments like this—like they’ve always known their place in the world, are comfortable with themselves and their bodies in a way that boggles Katie. Sometimes she still catches herself in a room with both of them and one word forms clearly about herself: “incidental.”

  “The tacking is still too slippery on this one,” her mother says.

  Katie looks past her mother toward her father, who is up to his elbow in the bag of salt. So different from all of them, Katie thinks, a sweet man with too much time on his hands, who loves to alter little everyday events with his wife into grand tales full of peril.

  “Jimmy, please,” her mother had said just last week, waving him off. “We did not almost die at the Citizens Bank drive-through yesterday.”

  It amazes Katie that while her father enjoys nothing better than to tell his stories to an audience now—a simple trip to the grocery store will stretch out to a half hour—he still can’t understand Katie’s need to listen to other people’s stories. To hear the inflections or the wavering in their voices, to watch the way they move or sigh or keep their eyes lowered, to witness how their bodies shift when their words won’t come out the way they want.

  She’s nothing like either of her parents, Katie thinks now, fanning herself with one hand against the heat. So who, then, is she like?

  “Two things,” her mother says, flipping up the visor. “One, Michael and Dana are coming to Thanksgiving this year, because his parents are going on a cruise, even though it’s their turn to have all their kids for the holiday.” Her mother lowers her voice, face clenching up with annoyance. “You just know they’re going to expect Michael and Dana at Christmas now, but I won’t give in on this one, Katie, and I’ve already warned your sister. I won’t go two Christmases in a row without them, just because his parents have decided to be spontaneous for the first time in their lives.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be a problem, Mom.”

  “It better not be,” she says, shifting in her seat to regard Katie for a few seconds. Her face loses its harsh edges. “And I know things are stressful right now with this court business, and it certainly isn’t going to get any easier, but we want you there, too, hon. Your Aunt Ginny will be there this year, and she misses you. She said so just a few days ago. We all do.”

  “Maybe for a little while,” Katie says, running her sleeve across her forehead.

  “Good,” her mother says, nodding. “And two,” she says, and here her voice becomes gentle, almost hesitant. Her hand travels up and rests on Katie’s upper arm and stays there—never a good sign. “I know it’s going to be difficult to get through this trial, but I want you to consider something.”

  Uh-oh. Katie pinches the front of her shirt, makes a tent, and pushes the fabric in and out.

  “It’s about these films,” her mother says.

  “What about them?” Katie asks, ready for the brief peace to crash down around them again.

  “Now, I know we don’t talk a lot about your work, because it’s private and yours and we had that discussion years ago. But you just spend so much time watching these people,” her mother says. “And I just think that they take away from what should be essential right now.”

  Katie can see from the look on her mother’s face that this is supposed to be a Big Moment between them, a Mother-Daughter Event of Great Importance, the real reason her parents are here tonight and why her father is still salting the walkway, even though the snow has finally tapered off completely.

  “Is this about the Nick thing, Mom? Why you don’t want me to mention his name anymore?” Katie hates that she can’t let it go, hates how her voice sounds, filled with childish defensiveness.

  Her mother rolls her eyes, waves at the air with her free hand. “No, not exactly, Kate.”

  “Then what?”

  Her mother’s brow furrows momentarily, and she casts her eyes to her lap, struggling for words, it seems, a vulnerable, foreign look on her face that instantly reminds Katie of childhood. Katie sits very still, watching her mother’s internal battle, and suddenly remembers, with bizarre but startling clarity, a school project in the fifth grade where students made small holes in the bottoms of eggs. They emptied the contents, leaving the fragile skins of the empty eggs thin and brittle. When Katie was halfway through painting her shell, she saw the long crack snaking up one side. Her mother’s face looks just like that fragile egg now—delicate, as if it could split open at any minute.

  “Mom?”

  “Okay, well, I’m trying, Katie, give me a break.” Her mother pulls the collar on her coat together, lets out a small sigh. “Well, it’s almost like—it’s almost like you become consumed with these people, Kate. And I think, especially now during the trial, that it takes away from what matters the most.”

  “I told you already, I thought it would help me avoid reliving the emotions of the trial every night. A way to work and also escape—”

  “Exactly,” her mother almost shouts, slapping the dashboard. “Exactly, Kate.”

  Katie shakes her head. “Exactly what? You want me to spend my nights replaying everything that happens in court?”

  “No, not replay the days,” her mother says. “But now that Nick is gone, now that another chapter is beginning in your life, just try to pay attention to what really matters.”

  “Which is what, Mom?”

  Her mother leans back to stare at Katie. “Well, you, Katie,” she finally says in a surprised tone. She reaches over, pokes Katie twice in the chest. “Just you.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Katie says, frustration making the words thick.

  “Yes, that’s my point exactly.”

  “I’m fine, Mom, if that’s what you’re getting at. Everything is just fine.”

  “You’re always ‘just fine,’ Katie.”

  “Shouldn’t that make you feel better?”

  “I don’t need to feel better. This isn’t about me.”

  They both turn when they hear Katie’s father clear his throat outside the car. He stands in front of the hood, hands locked behind his back.

  “Well, that ought to do it,” he says loudly, surveying the walkway and the stairs with approval.

  Katie leans over and plants a quick kiss on her mother’s cheek. “We can finish this tomorrow, okay?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, pops open the car door.

  She steps out into the freezing night too fast—her left heel skids forward on the slick rocks, but her father is there in a second, his hand underneath one elbow.

  “Steady there,” he says.

  She stares at the lumpy salt winking up at her from the walk, at the wet, patchy drifts of snow on her front lawn. The dog is still barking somewhere, a mournful sound in the distance. Katie steps back from the car, watches her father put one leg inside.

  “I hoo
ked your purse and grocery bag on the doorknob,” he says.

  He looks like he’s about to fold his tall frame into the Chevy, but instead he leans toward Katie. She starts to offer him her cheek, but her father just looks at her, his hazel eyes full of concern.

  “Ice cream, Katie?” he whispers. “I thought you went to the market for bread?”

  The house is completely dark inside. Katie keeps her back against the door, watches the headlights of her parents’ car crawl up the wall and zip away. She has needed this silence all day, has craved it ever since she stumbled out of court this morning, and yet now that she’s by herself, the full weight of it settles down around her. And then Dottie’s words come again, puncturing the thick quiet. Jerry saved Nick? What happened in that month of her and Nick’s trial separation? And then a familiar darkness sweeps through her body: What if Katie hadn’t asked Nick to leave? Would he still be alive?

  In the kitchen she pulls a serving spoon out of the silverware drawer, tears off the cardboard zipper on the ice-cream carton, picks at the extra cardboard that never comes off. Carton in one hand, spoon in the other, Katie walks to the blinking answering machine, shoveling a towering spoonful of mint chocolate chip into her mouth. With the handle of the spoon, she pokes the red message button, then digs into the ice cream again.

  There is a long beep, and then six messages: a reporter from the Providence Journal, wondering if she can “chat” with Katie for a few minutes; Dana, reminding her to call if Katie wants her in court tomorrow; Todd, a grad student from RISD who helped Katie years ago with lighting, hoping to pick up some extra work; a perky woman from Whirlpool who enunciates her words with a sinuousness that makes every S snake out a few seconds too long (Nick would have loved her); and her friend Jill, her voice way too casual, asking when they can grab lunch and catch up. Katie deletes each message as soon as she gets the gist of what they want from her, and she’s about to delete the last one—the telling air space and a bit of static must mean a telemarketer—but freezer head hits her full blast. She drops the spoon and the ice cream into the sink, sandwiches her head between her palms. A man’s tentative, feminine voice fills the kitchen.