A Field Guide to Deception (6 page)

In the office, Claire kicked her chair, tore some credit card offers into coin-sized pieces, thought about abandoning her pretense—she'd spent the last hour sharpening two boxes of pencils, and separating those irritating little paper clips from the larger ones—for a run along the road. Quickly thought better. Sat down, fidgeted, stretched her fingers like a pianist and attacked the keyboard.

Five more chapters, and two months to finish them; she had this well under control. The anxiety, then, was inexplicable. She thought of Liv's hands, the taper of her fingers, the nicks to her skin. Claire
stood so suddenly that her chair pitched backwards. She yanked on her running shoes and fled outside.

Liv and Simon, barefoot, lay asleep on the recliners. The umbrella covering their faces and torsos, the afternoon a thick, wavy dream, Claire watched them while she stretched. Her shins ached from the pavement. She decided on ribs for dinner, buttered corn, baked beans, and peas. She bent over, palms in the grass, and felt her hamstrings protest. Running. Not her best plan ever. She'd just shifted the ache to a different set of muscles.

Simon woke first, sneaked peas from the bowl on the table, while Claire grilled. They had to wake Liv for dinner; even the smell of ribs hadn't done it, Claire basting on her father's dense tangy sauce.

“All afternoon?” Liv asked.

“The entire thing,” Claire answered.

“I'm so sorry.”

“As punishment, you'll do dishes.”

“You can't think of anything worse?”

“Give me a little time.”

“Anything,” Liv said. “Anything at all.” And then she gasped, “Deer!” and ran to the railing of the deck, motioning for Simon to follow her as she clambered up. Five large animals, thirty meters away, ate from the molasses lick Claire had left in the meadow. “What do you think?” Liv asked the child.

“Ride on them,” he said.

“You'd have to catch them first.”

“Let's go,” he said, and jumped down.

“No, no.” She laughed, and waved him back. “They're having dinner. Let's just watch them.”

After their own dinner, Simon brought all the Sandra Boynton books down to Liv to read at the table. His mother drank wine, watched the blond head beside the black one. Liv looked leaner than she had even six
weeks ago. Her body tanned and spotted, her hair winged out a bit over her ears. She read playfully as Simon turned the pages.

“Will you read one to me, Simon?” Liv asked.

He nodded, opened a book, and began to read, mimicking perfectly his mother's own reading voice. Both women held their breath.

“Simon, can you read another?” his mother asked.

He read them all. They sent him inside to get more, and he read those too. At the end, they gave him a small bag of chocolate-covered almonds for a prize.

“Did you know he could read?” Claire asked after he'd been put to bed.

“I had no idea. Except he turned the pages just as I finished reading, so I knew he was following along.”

Later, into a second bottle of wine, she asked Liv if she'd considered having children. Liv laughed, shook her head, “I don't sleep with men.”

“I didn't either.”

“Didn't?”

“Artificial insemination.”

“Promise?” Liv asked.

“Promise.”

“Did your aunt know?”

“No. I told her I got drunk and met someone. She always loved a brawling story.”

Liv's eyebrows knitted together. “Can you afford all this—the house, the kid, this place—on your own?” She stretched her hand out as though to cover everything.

“My aunt paid for this place years ago. I have savings, and she left us money; we're more than fine.”

“Do you want a cigarette?”

Claire took one, knelt against Liv to have it lit. She could smell her, the musk of her body. Inhaling, she cocked her head back and glared at the stars.

“Where do you go at night?” Claire asked quietly.

“I drive around.”

“Do you pick up girls?”

“Yes.”

“Does it make you feel better?”

“Not yet.” Liv stared at Claire's thighs. Her nipples were hard, her breathing irregular. Claire dragged from her cigarette to have something in her mouth.

Through the dark, noises carried, too heavy to be wind or leaves. They couldn't see the deer anymore, but they knew they were there.

Mushrooms could look like blown glass: violet or brilliant orange. They could grow up through asphalt. Some were hula skirts carved from the meat of a coconut. Some were golden martini glasses. Tender, as various as sea creatures, mushrooms oozed and blossomed. In a basket, they might be mistaken for candies. A bouquet of mushrooms, a colonizing fungus: they were delicate, dangerous, ancient, and frequently delicious.

Claire had not typed a single word of text. Instead, this morning, she'd flipped through the file of labeled photographs studying the samples. They might be alien. They might be poisonous. They might make the world a bold, psychedelic dream.

Her head ached. Uncertain which had ruined her most effectively—Liv or the wine—Claire had left the deck with the spins and sat on the edge of the bathtub, willing herself not to be ill. Dee had called mushrooms sea angels. In the photographs, Claire thought most looked like they were melting, and a moment later would be gone: the vanishing Witch's Hat, the drawn Alcohol Inky.

Why did Liv pick up girls? Claire hadn't asked, but she'd wanted to. She wasn't even certain how she had known to ask about the girls at all. As soon as the question formed itself in her mouth, she had known the answer. Does it make you feel better? What had she meant? And why had Liv answered? Claire couldn't understand any of it.

Claire stopped at a photograph of Dee: wild grey curls framed her face as she crouched on the ground beside the spined sphere of the Dusky Puffball. And in the next, Simon beside her, hands on his knees, concentration in his gaze. Abandoning the file, Claire sat
at the computer and began to batter away at the tedious identifying descriptions: markings, measurements, coloring, seasonality, habitat, range, edibility. The tiny, trod upon kingdom of mycology, the devil's toenails, her aunt's renown closing around her more tightly with every tap of her fingers.

Simon kept his hand on the side of the wheelbarrow. Against this load of fencing, Liv yanked and drove. How had it happened? Claire pressed against her, voice no more than a sigh, and Liv tells her she drives around at night to pick up girls. Dear god. You king fuck of all time. Liv stopped to spit and heard Simon do the same.

“Nice one, buddy,” she said encouragingly.

He waited, hand still on the wheelbarrow. Red monkey hat blocking half of his expression from her. She pressed on, smothering curses. And more violent hammering, her back and shoulders raging, a desperate fury roused in her like a creature surfacing from some incomprehensible depth that cannot re-submerge.

Simon handed her nails, and held the hammer while she grabbed more wood. Already, she had pissed away possibility: she had torn the petals off. Does it make you feel better?

“Oh, Simon, I've spoiled everything.”

He handed her another nail.

Claire had baked potatoes for dinner. They ate in silence. Each fork set down on the plate like a white flag. Bees hovered about and had to be thrashed with rolled magazines.

Seven

Murdering mother figures

Liv had had a letter from her parents, recycled from the pad in the kitchen—the back of each sheet had phone numbers, cryptic messages, and lists for cottage cheese, salad stuff, luncheon meat. As always, her mother wrote the body, and her father added a postscript. They were well, had stayed with Liv's sister for several weeks, and—wait for it—fallen even more in love with the grandkids. You wouldn't believe, her mother wrote, how precocious they are. Her father had scribbled a note about a sports team she'd never heard of, or possibly something to do with golf. Before she folded it away, Liv read it three times. A lot of words to say so little.

She and Simon had taken their shoes off to soak their feet in the river. It was a shame, Liv thought, that they didn't have a dog. If she could see him now, Liv's mother would have called Simon towheaded, but Liv thought golden-haired whenever the sunlight struck him. The child glowed.

The fence, finished at last, and praised in detail by Claire, had done much to improve diplomatic relations. Liv had not left the house at night, not even for a supply run. She would never have vocalized her rationale for this, nor would she have needed to.

“Simon, I think we should get a present for Mommy. Do you want to get her a present?”

“OK,” Simon said and stood up to go.

“What should we get?” Liv asked.

“Ice cream.”

“How about something that won't melt?”

He grabbed his shoes and socks, and waited for Liv to put them on.

“Maybe something for camping.” Liv said, wiping his wet feet off with her shirt before shuffling on his socks.

They went to REI and found a new camp stove. “Something that melts, after all,” Liv said. She let the idea man pick out some Haribo gummi bears. On the way home, they stopped for strawberry milkshakes.

Claire actually blushed when Simon handed her the REI bag. She looked up at Liv and then took out the stove and squealed almost exactly like her son. They put the stove together and heated some hot chocolate to be drunk from tin mugs as though they were already on an adventure.

Simon ran inside and dragged the tent out to them. They set it up in the meadow, inflated the pads, and unfurled the sleeping bags. Simon kept zipping himself in and out, a headlamp around his neck like a rugged necklace.