Crystal Lies (11 page)

“It’s the truth—”

“Overruled, counselor!” I yelled at his face. Then I leaned forward and stared into his eyes. “Yes, I almost forgot, Geoffrey; you’re a lawyer. It’s your job to know how to spin any story. You get paid to make crap look good, don’t you?”

Then I walked out the front door, got into my car, and squealed my tires on the street as I tore around the corner. I was so outraged that I’m sure I was probably just as dangerous as someone driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but fortunately I made it back to the apartment without injuring anything but my pride.

I was still furious after I got home to my apartment. I paced through the kitchen and into the living room, back and forth, ruminating over all the things I should’ve said or done while I still had Geoffrey’s attention. I wished I had slapped him or spit in his smooth-featured face. Immature perhaps, but I think that something physical would’ve made me feel better.

I stopped pacing long enough to look at the flower arrangement on my coffee table. I just stood there staring at it and trying to remember why I had thought it so lovely the night before. Then I plucked out the grocery store flowers and shoved them into a juice pitcher. And I picked up the large crystal vase, dumped out the water, walked over to the open window, and pushed the screen aside. I took a moment to peer down, making sure no one was below before I released the vase and watched it plummet to the concrete sidewalk. I stared for a couple of horrified seconds, shocked at what I’d done, but then I looked down in fascination, studying the thousands of shining pieces of sparkling crystal splayed across the sidewalk. Then I got the broom and the dustpan and a brown paper bag and hurried downstairs to clean up my mess.

“What’s going on?” demanded the young mother of the two waif children I had been scolded for trying to protect just two days ago.

“I dropped something,” I told her, eying her carefully. Did she intend to report me to the manager now? Or maybe the police for endangerment? What if her children had been around? I suddenly felt very ashamed and childish—sheepish even.

She coolly lit a cigarette and watched as I quickly swept up my glittering mess. “It looks like diamonds,” she said as she sat down on the steps and continued to watch me.

I paused and looked at the shards of crystal glistening in the sun, then nodded. “It does, doesn’t it?”

“What was it?” she asked.

I turned and studied her. She appeared to be in her early twenties but still dressed like she was in high school. She had on a short denim skirt and a little pale pink top that exposed not only a bare midriff but a belly-button ring as well. I suspected she was a single mom since I hadn’t seen a guy around. “It was a very expensive Waterford crystal vase,” I told her, waiting to see if she would react.

“How did you drop it?” She peered up to the open window of my apartment now.

“Like this.” I held out my hand with my fingers together, then opened them wide.

“On purpose?”

I nodded. “Going to report me?”

She got a sly look on her face. “Maybe.”

I shrugged. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“Yeah.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “Then why’d you do it?” I swept the last of the shards into my dustpan, then dumped them into the paper sack. “You really want to know?”

“Yeah, why not?”

I swept the pavement a few more times, pushing the fine remaining glass dust over the curb and into the gutter. “I think I got it all, but you better not let your kids go barefoot down here for a while,” I said as I turned back to her.

“So why’d you do it?” she asked me again.

I sat down on the step next to her. “Well, my husband got me that vase for our twenty-fifth anniversary.”

She nodded as she blew out a long puff of smoke. “And?”

“And I just found out he’s been cheating on me.”

“Man, that really sucks, huh?” I nodded. “Yeah, it really sucks.”

“So you left him?”

“Yes. But I confronted him today, and, naturally, he denied everything. And I came home but still felt really, really angry.”

“Duh.”

“And when I saw that vase in my apartment, well, I just couldn’t help myself.”

She patted me on the back now. “Well, good for you.”

“I guess.”

“Do you feel better now?”

I nodded. “A little. I just wish I had smashed the stupid vase in his driveway instead. Then he would’ve had to clean it up.”

“You could always go bash in his car or something,” she suggested. “Slash his tires or break his windows—something like that.”

I turned and looked at her, curious as to whether she was serious or not. Apparently she was. “I suppose,” I said. “But he’s an attorney, and his car is a pretty expensive Porsche. It might just make things worse.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She sighed. “And it wouldn’t be fair to make the Porsche suffer, right?”

“Right.” I couldn’t help thinking of the satisfaction from scarring Judith’s car.

Then she smiled and stuck out her hand. “I’m Cammie, and my old man cheated on me too.”

I shook her hand. “I’m sorry about that. I’m Glennis. And I’m sorry
about the other day, too. I think your children reminded me of mine when they were younger, and I got sort of protective of them.”

“Hey, that’s okay. I know I’m a pretty crappy mom.”

“No,” I said,“I’m sure you’re a good mom.”

She laughed. “Yeah, well, you’re the only one then.”

“Where are your kids today?”

“With their dad. Don’t even ask me why I let them go. We’re having this stupid custody battle, and I’ve told my lawyer that I don’t want him to have any custody at all because he’s such a total jerk. But then Mike calls up and acts really sweet and says how he wants to take the kids someplace special, and, well, I’m so tired of being a full-time mommy, like 24/7, you know, that I just agree. Great mom, huh?”

“Hey, it’s hard when your kids are little,” I told her. “Do you have any family around to help out?”

She shook her head. “No, my family’s all in the Midwest. I came out here with Mike, and according to my stupid state-appointed lawyer, I can’t leave the state until this thing is worked out. And maybe not even then if Mike gets any custody. It really sucks.”

“Do you think there’s any chance you two can work it out?” I asked. “And get back together?”

“For the sake of the children?” she said in a dramatic voice. “That’s what my parents keep telling me. ‘Stay together for the sake of the children, Cammie.’ Like never mind that Mike is the one who stepped out on me, or that he’s the one who messed everything up. No, I’m supposed to stick with this slime bag,
for the sake of the children
. Right!”

“It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! It makes me freaking furious sometimes.”

“Me, too.” I held up my bag of broken crystal as evidence. “And it’s hard even when your kids
aren’t
little. My college-aged daughter thinks I should stick it out too,
for the sake of the family.”

Cammie shook her head. “Don’t you wish they’d all just butt out?” I nodded. “I sort of do.”

“Was that your son I saw coming out of your apartment today?”

“Yes, that’s Jacob.”

“He’s cute.”

I smiled. “Well, he’s only nineteen, plus he’s got some, uh, problems to work out.”

“Drugs?”

I turned and looked at her. How did she know?“What makes you think that?”

“It’s just the most obvious guess. I think about half the kids in the country are messing with drugs. I know Mike was.”

“Really? Was your husband an addict?”

“An addict? I don’t know about that. I guess I’d just describe him as more of a recreational user. But I never went in for that crap. Oh, I smoked a little pot now and then back when we were in high school, but I don’t really like how it makes me feel. I don’t even like alcohol that much anymore.”

“That’s probably good,” I told her. “Especially for your kids.”

“Yeah. I figure I’m sort of all they have right now. And I may not be much, but I probably need to be sober for them. And even though I smoke, I don’t do it in the apartment. I know that secondhand smoke is bad, especially for kids.”

“Well, see,” I told her as I stood up. “You
are
a good mom.”

She laughed again. “I wish.”

“And if you need a break from your kids sometime, feel free to ask me to watch them for you.”

“Really?” She stood up and ground out her cigarette butt beneath the heel of her flip-flop.

“Sure, I love kids.”

“Well, that’s cool and everything, but I don’t want to take advantage, you know.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’ll feel free to say no if it’s not a good time.”

“All right then.” She nodded. “I appreciate that.”

“Take care,” I told her as I picked up my broom, dustpan, and heavy paper sack. “You, too.”

I went upstairs to my apartment and started to throw away the broken crystal shards, then stopped. Looking down into the bag, I decided that perhaps I should hang on to this foolish mess for just a while longer—I wasn’t even sure why. But I took out a large wooden salad bowl and carefully poured the broken glass into it. Then I set this on the coffee table, and to my surprise it was rather pretty. It was also a good visual reminder of what my marriage had become—broken shards of what had once appeared flawless.

I decided to take up jogging again. I’m sure I hoped it would be some kind of stress reliever. I hadn’t jogged for almost two years, but my old running shoes still fit. On the first day, I could barely keep it up for ten minutes without my sides burning like fire, and that was when I walked part of the time. But by the end of my first week I was almost up to twenty minutes before I could only walk. Of course, my payoff for my efforts was mostly just a great deal of pain. It seemed that every part of me hurt these days. Even so, I kept it up. Physical pain proved a fairly good distraction from the condition of my heart.

And naturally, my emotions were like a moment-by-moment roller-coaster ride. When Jacob was around, I tried to appear upbeat, acting like I was perfectly fine and at peace with my situation. But when he went off to his job at Mama Mia’s, I plummeted to the depths, vacillating between feeling enraged and completely crushed. At times I actually thought I had simply dreamed the whole thing up. I’d flash back to happier times, and for brief moments I’d honestly think the recent unhappy events were my own hallucinations. To be honest, I think I even questioned the state of my own sanity. And so I suppose it was somewhat fortuitous that Sherry had gone ahead and made that appointment with Dr. Abrams for me.

“So you’re really going to go then?” asked Sherry as we had lunch at the mall on Saturday.

I nodded. “Yes. I think I probably need to.”

“Did you mention marriage counseling to Geoffrey yet?”

“No.” I stirred my iced tea. “It hardly seemed appropriate when I felt like screaming and kicking and scratching his eyes out.”

“No, I suppose not.” I sighed. Suddenly I felt very, very tired. “How’s Jacob doing?”

“Okay,” I told her. “He’s been going to work every day, coming home afterward.”

“So you think he’s straightening up?”

I nodded. “Yes, I really do. He had his court date for the MIP—minor in possession—last week, and since it was his first offense, they gave him a break.”

“Oh, that’s great. It probably didn’t hurt anything that his dad’s the city attorney.”

I frowned. “Don’t be so sure. Anyway, all he has to do is forty hours of community service, and he has eight months to get it done.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“Jacob was really relieved. He said it will help him to get on with his life.”

Sherry smiled. “Well, that’s wonderful.”

I forced a weak smile to my lips. “Yes, it really is. I don’t even know what I’d be doing right now if Jacob’s life was still off track. Sometimes it seems like that’s all I really have.”

“What about Sarah? Have you talked to her lately?”

“A couple of days ago. I told her about Jacob’s coming to live with me, and she told me I was a fool.”

“She’s young.”

“And idealistic. She thinks that her father and I should stay together no matter what.”

“It’s pretty natural for kids to want their parents to stay together.”

“Jacob doesn’t seem to care.”

“Well, he and Geoffrey hadn’t exactly been seeing things eye to eye lately.”

“That’s true. I just wish that Sarah could try to understand. Do you know what she said to me before she hung up?” Sherry shook her head.

“She asked me what I thought she was supposed to do when it was time for her to get married. Was she supposed to invite both of us to her wedding?”

Sherry looked surprised. “I didn’t even know she was engaged.”

“She’s not,” I told her. “She doesn’t even have a boyfriend.” Sherry laughed. “Well, that sounds like Sarah, doesn’t it? Always planning ahead.”

I frowned. “And thinking of herself. Sometimes I can’t believe I raised such a self-centered daughter.”

“She’s Geoffrey’s daughter too.” I nodded. “You hit that nail on the head.”

Then we went shopping, and Sherry insisted that I get a new outfit. And even though I protested, she continued dragging me along until she finally found some things that she liked, piling me high with jacket and skirt and blouse and practically shoving me into the dressing room.

“Why?” I demanded as I stood with arms outstretched to show her the DKNY outfit she had picked out for me. “Where on earth am I going to wear this anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She nodded with approval. “Sometimes you just need a new outfit to make you feel special.”

“I don’t need a new outfit, Sherry,” I told her. “I need a new life.”

“Very nice,” she said as she fingered the sleeve of the rusty tweed jacket. “And the color suits you.”

I examined the tag. “Nice and expensive,” I told her. “Remember that Geoffrey canceled my debit card, Sherry.”

“Did he cancel
all
your cards?” Her brows lifted hopefully. I considered this. “I’m not sure.”

“When was the last time you charged something here?” she asked with a sly smile.

“I don’t know. Maybe last Christmas.” I took another look at the outfit and realized that it really was a good style for me, and since I’d lost that weight, it did look fairly nice. But still I didn’t see the purpose.

“When was the last time you bought yourself a nice outfit, Glennis?”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“Well, I think you should give your Bradley’s charge card a little try.” I shook my head. “Oh, I don’t know, Sherry.”

“Come on,” she urged. “Geoffrey owes you this.” I studied Sherry, my one friend who usually gives me sound advice, and considered this. “Maybe you’re right.” She nodded. “Of course I am.”

“But what if the card is rejected?”

“Then we just walk.”

“Seriously?” I giggled. “We just leave it on the counter and walk out?”

“Yes.” She grinned. “Kind of exciting, isn’t it?”

So I carried the pieces of my suit up to the cash register and waited anxiously as the salesgirl rang it all up. I held my breath as she ran my card, and to my amazement she handed me a receipt to sign. Sherry winked at me, and without batting an eyelash, I signed my name.

“What about getting some shoes to go with it?” asked Sherry.

And so I purchased boots, of all things, and a matching purse and belt, along with several other nice pieces, which I felt sure must’ve maxed out the Bradley’s charge account, before Sherry and I finally decided to call it a day. Feeling as reckless as Bonnie and Clyde, we stowed my bags and packages in the back of the Range Rover, and then I threw back my head and laughed.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” I told my accomplice.

“Well,” said Sherry as we climbed into the SUV,“I’ve heard of women who’ve slit tires or burned clothes or bashed in their husband’s little sports cars with sledgehammers. A little shopping therapy seems like a small price to pay compared to that.”

“I guess.”

“Besides,” she said,“you may need that suit when it comes time to look for a job.”

“A job.” I shook my head as I backed out of the parking space. “Now that’s a really overwhelming idea.”

“One day at a time, Glennis.”

Right. One day at a time, I kept telling myself until the day of my appointment with Dr. Abrams. To bolster my confidence, and since it seemed that fall was really in the air, I decided to wear my new suit. I figured if I had to be a complete mess on the inside, I might at least look like I had it together on the outside.

I liked Dr. Abrams right from the start. She seemed intelligent and compassionate as she asked me questions, then listened with empathetic eyes as I attempted to answer. And although we didn’t really solve any major life problems during that first appointment, she did give me some coping mechanisms, including some relaxation techniques and stress-relieving exercises that included a lot of deep breathing. I was relieved that she didn’t try to prescribe any medications. Of course, I didn’t admit my fear about losing my mind. I decided I’d better save that little prize until later. Even so, she encouraged me to consider what events had brought me to this place in my life. She suggested I begin writing things down. She even gave me a short list of questions, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to think about all that yet. One thing she alluded to, but never came right out and said, is that I seemed to focus more on the problems of other members of my family than on my own.

I frowned. “But I honestly don’t think I’d have any problems if Jacob hadn’t gotten involved with drugs and if Geoffrey hadn’t cheated on me.”

She just nodded and jotted something down. And for some reason that made me feel nervous. Just the same, I made another appointment with her for next month. I think I’ll probably go, but I still have a few weeks to change my mind.

After my appointment with Dr. Abrams, I met Sherry for coffee at Starbucks.

“You look great,” she told me as we took our coffees to an empty table by the window.

“Thanks.” I attempted a smile. “So?” she began. “How did it go?”

“Okay,” I told her. “Good.”

“She gave me some exercises and an assignment of sorts. I’m supposed to go back next month.”

“That’s great. Did you ask her about bringing Geoffrey?”

“I mentioned it.”

“And?”

“She said that was a good idea if Geoffrey wanted to come, but she didn’t think it would do any good to force him.”

“Right.”

I stirred my coffee. “Do you think I should ask him?”

Sherry nodded, then studied me for a long moment without speaking.

“What?” I asked her, certain she was thinking something.

“Oh, nothing.” She waved her hand.

Well, nothing gets to me worse than someone saying “nothing.”

“What is it?” I asked her. “I can tell you were about to say something. Is it about Geoffrey?”

“No…” Then she smiled. “It was really pretty silly, Glennis.”

“What?” I demanded. “Tell me.”

“Oh, I was just wondering why you haven’t bothered to cover up that gray hair. You know you would look at least ten years younger without it.” I rolled my eyes at her. “What is this? Make over Glennis month?” She smiled. “Yeah, maybe.”

“What difference does it make if I look younger or hipper or whatever, Sherry? My life will still be a mess.”

She glanced at her watch, then suddenly pulled out her cell phone and began dialing. Before I knew what had hit us, we had finished our coffees and gone down the street to a salon called Alta’s, and I was standing at the reception desk while Sherry conspired with a short blond woman named Bessie.

“Okay,” said Sherry, as if it were all settled. “I’ve got to go show a house right now, but Bessie can take you in about twenty minutes.” She leaned over and picked up a slightly tattered issue of
Vogue
and handed it to me as she led me over to the waiting area.

“I don’t know, Sherry,” I began.

“Don’t you trust me, Glennis?”

“Well, I suppose so, but why are you doing—”

“Look, Bessie knows exactly what to do. Just sit here and wait until she calls you, and then trust me, okay?”

I looked up into her clear blue eyes and realized that very few people are blessed with a friend as loyal and kind as Sherry. I finally nodded, then waved as she whooshed out the door. Then I opened the magazine and tried to think about absolutely nothing as I flipped past page after page of outrageous styles and gauntly thin models who looked about the same age or perhaps even younger than my daughter.

“Glennis Harmon?” called the blonde.

“Bessie?” I said as I laid aside the magazine, picked up my purse, and walked over to her station.

She smiled. “Have a seat.”

I sat down in the chair and stared at my reflection in the mirror. I vaguely wondered who that old woman was, but part of me didn’t really care. It seemed my drab hair and colorless face suited my spirits just fine. Why bother changing it?

Bessie loosened the barrette that was holding back my hair in a pony-tail and let it fall loosely around my shoulders. I gave it a little shake, then forced a laugh. “Great for Halloween,” I said. “All I need is a pointed hat and a broom.”

Bessie frowned. “Sherry is absolutely right. You are too young to be going around looking like this.”

I just shrugged, then followed her like a sheep to the slaughter back to the shampooing station. But I must admit that it felt nice to have someone gently scrubbing and massaging my scalp. I tried to remember the last time Geoffrey had touched me in a gentle or loving way. It seemed like it had been years. Maybe it had. Tears streamed down my cheeks as Bessie started to towel my hair dry.

“Did I get soap in your eyes?” she asked with concern.

“Just a little,” I lied as I dabbed my eyes with the edge of the towel.

Then I was back in the chair with the glaring lights and all-too-revealing mirror. I decided not to torture myself, so I shut my eyes as I was subjected to various stages of hair coloring. Throughout the entire ordeal, I didn’t allow myself to look at the mirror. What difference did it make? Even if my hair turned bright green or all fell out, who would really care?

Finally I felt a nudge on my shoulder. “Don’t you want to see?” she was asking me.

“Sorry,” I told her, opening my eyes, attempting to focus. Then I looked up and saw my hair looking very much as it had looked nearly twenty years ago, only without the bangs. She had cut bluntly, just above my shoulders, and the color was auburn again. Perhaps not as intense as
it used to be, but it seemed to look more natural like this, more subdued and fitting with my age.