A Field Guide to Deception (9 page)

Claire thought of herself in the car on the roadside. Her aunt's body in the snow. Impotent. A scared child left behind, incapable of climbing from the car. You cannot be broken. You cannot be broken while I am still alive and needing you.

“Can we get drunk?” Liv asked.

“Sure. Come and see the pantry. Any poison you like.”

Claire does not mention Bailey, or their night out. She does not mention the Mercury Café or Liv's disappointed disciples. After that night, she found herself a reluctant stone thrower—unwilling to cast judgment.

“Are you close with your parents?” Claire asked.

“Before I moved back to Spokane, I lived with them for a while. That's not something I would recommend.” Liv picked Tanqueray, and tailed Claire to the kitchen for tonic and limes.

“I rarely last a conversation with my parents,” Claire said, worrying for her mother's breasts. For the illness that must be inevitable. “Get
a kid. Simon deflects a lot of their energy, and doesn't seem to notice that they're insane.”

“My mother's usually got four million questions she wants answered the first half hour. She didn't talk much this trip. I kind of missed the endless cataloguing of minutiae. Anything's better than your mom on the couch, sobbing for two days straight. I spent most of my time there trying not to call you.” Liv held up her glass. “Anyway, here's to tumblers.” She lit another cigarette, then grinned at Claire: “At some point, we're probably going to have to discuss what all this means.”

“You mean how I'm paying you for sex?”

“Yeah, you totally lowballed me.” Liv flicked ash off the deck. “We don't have to talk about it now, I'm just saying that I know it's coming.”

“You make it sound so dire, like you're preparing for a siege.” Claire tried to laugh, to sound as though Liv's tone hadn't troubled her, as though she hadn't wondered each night if Liv would return at all. “We're dating, aren't we? It's intense because you live here and we're isolated and Simon loves you. But it's just dating.”

Distracted by the rail of the deck, Liv had looked away from Claire. “You're right.” She stood and took her glass to the kitchen before coming back out to finish her cigarette. “It's late,” she said. “And I'm tired. Sleep well.” She kissed the top of Claire's head and left through the field.

Sensitive, Claire thought, and was immediately ashamed of herself. What did it mean—all this? She could see the girls in the bar, an endless line of them in bathrooms, and alleyways. A city of girls with their arms wide, and their faces eager. Cold now, even with the blanket, she went inside to bed.

Ten

Hives

Bailey ordered for both of them. “You're going to love these crepes,” she said. “They're marvelous.”

Bittersweet Bakery, high-ceilinged and classical, had the most welcoming atmosphere. Claire thought of Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house while she drank her latte. Bailey split the croissant between them, her fingernails plum-colored, hair swept back elegantly from her face.

“I love this place,” she said. “Eventually, I want to open a little bakery like this.”

“I can see it.”

“Can you?” Bailey, pleased, devoured her croissant.

Claire wasn't sure why she'd come. She'd had to ask Liv to watch Simon. Bailey's enthusiasm on the phone, her chattering, the delighted delivery of the invite; Claire had agreed, she thought, to have a respite from silence.

“I have a confession,” Bailey said. “I know who you are.”

Claire, sanguine, looked across at her. “Who am I?”

“You're the woman employing Liv.”

Claire nodded. “Yes.”

“It was one thing that first night, but not saying now would just seem, I don't know, less somehow.”

“Less?” Claire asked.

“Devalued or something.”

“Yes.” Half of Claire's coffee was gone. She was hungry and wished for her crepe.

“Do you mind if I tell you? Do you mind talking about it?”

“No,” Claire said, rocking her flip flop rhythmically with her toes. “I don't mind.”

“Liv came back three months ago. She'd been living back east with family, a cousin, I think, and then Portland for a while. She came back to town, and was harder or something, more aggressive anyway. We'd go out and just stare. It was so strange. I'd known her for ages and then I didn't know her at all.

“And then she starts with the girls. Subtle, at first, she'd say she was tired and heading home. You know, like that. And then later . . .” Bailey waved her hand.

A woman brought their crepes with little side salads and fans of cantaloupe. Claire bit into the sausage potato and shut her eyes to hold in the pleasure. Miraculously, the second bite was more expansive than the first.

“I told you,” Bailey said, smiling. “Anyway, I had this thought recently. I think Liv hates herself. I think she's doing this because she doesn't know what else to do. Her behavior is a kind of manic self-loathing. Do you see? A way out of thinking about anything, a way to be only physical. She's made everything physical: her work and her play. There's no time left to think—no place for the brain at all.”

“No,” Claire said. “The brain doesn't shut off when you're physical. If anything, it ranges more widely, especially if you're doing something you're adept at, like Liv with construction. She knows exactly what she's doing, so she'd have a lot of leisure to think while she's working.”

“Then why?” Bailey asked. “Why is she doing this?”

“Have you asked her?”

“No. She'd think I was judging her. I've hinted about people being upset, Liv getting a reputation, but she doesn't care about that.” Bailey fidgeted a moment, leaned across the table. “I think if you asked, she might tell you. I think she's smitten with you.”

“Smitten.” Claire arched her eyebrows. “No. I'm not going to pry into her personal life.”

“But what she's doing is crazy and reckless. I don't want to say
dangerous, but I think it is. I think it's dangerous. She's not twenty anymore.”

Liv fell off the ladder, straight backwards, and hit the deck. She'd fallen eight feet: the breath had knocked out of her and she'd nailed her head and back. Unconscious for only a moment, she woke to Simon pulling at her, terror on his face.

“I'm OK,” she said, moving her hand to touch his chest, to reassure him. “Simon, I need you to bring me my phone. It's on the kitchen table.” The boy couldn't seem to move. “Simon, can you get my phone, on the kitchen table?” Liv looked at the clouds and felt sick. For a moment, she closed her eyes.

When she came conscious again, Simon had the phone in his hands.

“Good boy,” she said. “Good boy, Simon. Let's call Mommy.”

Stretched on the recliner to brace the bag of peaches against her neck, and the mixed vegetables to her shoulders, Liv held the frozen clown fish to her head. Now that she was upright and talking, Simon found the frozen bags draped all over her to be quite amusing. He ran Toby up her bare leg, and down again.

When Claire and Bailey ran up, Liv said, “I must have hit my head even harder than I thought.”

“What were you doing on a ladder?” Claire demanded.

“A bee hive. I was trying to dislodge it with a broom handle.”

“Why didn't you use a hose to blast it loose?” Bailey asked. For a moment, they all looked at her, thrown by her unsuspected resourcefulness.

“I didn't think of it,” Liv said.

“That sentence could be shorter,” Claire said. “You didn't think.”

“Your appointment was with Bailey?” Liv asked.

Claire ignored this, said to Bailey: “So you'll stay with Simon?”

“Sure. Hey, kid, you'll love this.” Simon hovered over her purse, inspecting each item Bailey removed. “Ever played with nail polish?”

During the distraction, Claire helped Liv to the car. On the drive to the house, Claire had considered letting Bailey take Liv to urgent care; in many ways, that arrangement would have made more sense, but Claire knew she had to control the information, the back story, about her connection to Bailey. She drove too fast. Angry, unaccountably angry: Liv's fall from the ladder felt like a ruse to smoke out Claire's deception.

“Your appointment was with Bailey?” Liv asked again.

“Yes.”

“How did that happen—you two meeting?”

“Last week at the Mercury Café.”

Liv adjusted the clown fish on her head, and turned to stare out the window. They were both angry now. At Claire's speed, the drive to the hospital took six minutes rather than fifteen.

Bailey went through the cupboards systematically, taking down various items as they appealed to her. She handed each selection to Simon and he made a pile on the counter.

“Your mommy's a good shopper,” Bailey told him as she rooted through the refrigerator. She let him wash all the vegetables, and eat anything he wanted. “You like couscous?”

They had painted his fingernails and his toenails. He'd stayed perfectly still for her. She was blond like Cinderella, Simon thought. Afterwards, he'd shown her his trains and they had walked to the river. Then he had shown her his airplane, and Bailey had flown it while Simon ran underneath.

She chopped so rapidly he was mesmerized, as though this were a card trick instead of vegetables. “OK, I need a large pan and a small one. Right, good. We're going to bake the fish. Do you like fish? I can do quesadillas for you as well.”

She talked a lot. Sometimes just to say what she was doing, and sometimes to ask questions, but rarely stopping either way. She showed him how to set the table after the fish went in the oven. They set for four, reverently. She hadn't asked about Liv falling from the ladder, but she had taken the ladder down and rested it in the grass on the side of the house.

She put many different foods on his plate, in small portions. The colors bright and the smells complex, Simon held his fork and watched her eat. He smelled everything before he tasted it; then bolted his food like a stray cat.