Crystal Lies (5 page)

“No,” I lied. “It’s for my son. He’s going on a campout tomorrow.”

“Lucky kid,” said the guy as he totaled my purchase. I handed him
my Visa card, then wondered how long I would have this little luxury of giving someone plastic and getting merchandise in return. And even as he ran the card through his machine, a chill ran down my spine. What if it didn’t work? What if Geoffrey had already figured it out—that I had left him. What if he had canceled all my credit cards? Closed my checking and savings accounts?

“You okay, ma’am?” asked the kid.

I nodded. “Just tired,” I told him. “So much to do.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, handing me my receipt to sign. “There’s a lot of work involved in a campout.”

I signed the paper and sighed. “That’s the truth.”

“Tell your son to have fun.”

I made a pathetic attempt at a smile and assured him I would. Then, with my purchases heaped in the cart, I hurried out into the summer evening. I wondered where my son would be camping tonight. I knew he was probably better prepared than I, but still I worried. What if this final straw with his father was enough to push him right over the edge? What if Jacob used being kicked out of his home as an excuse to do something, well, something foolish? Or at least more foolish than what he’d already been doing? In the past I had prayed for Jacob during times like this, but more and more I felt that my prayers were like stones hurled toward heaven, but then gravity pulled those stones back down and heaped them upon me until I was buried alive in their rubble.

“Stock up while you can,” I told myself as I drove through the quiet streets. “Once Geoffrey finds out you’ve left him, you will have nothing.” And so I parked in front of the slightly sleazy all-night grocery store called More-4-Less. My cart limped with a jittery front wheel that made so much noise I was certain the whole store could hear me as I piled it high with staples. I couldn’t imagine that I would ever actually cook or eat these things, but I proceeded to load my cart with cans of soup, boxes of pasta,
and even several packages of rice pilaf. I suppose I felt the need to be prepared just in case Jacob should show up hungry and desperate. In a survivalist mode, I rattled down aisle after aisle until I was so exhausted it seemed I was walking through a dream, grasping at canned beans as if they were portals back to my old life.

To my relief, the bored-looking thirty-something woman at the checkout stand hardly glanced at me as she mechanically pushed item after item through the electronic eye, which worked only about half of the time, and the rest of the time she scanned it with a little hand-held thing. But like a zombie, I just stood there and stared at her, wondering how she managed to live like this, working in a smelly grocery store in the middle of the night. Her nametag said Sylvia, but nothing else. Did she, like me, have a crummy little apartment to go home to? Children? A husband? A dog?

“Did you know that this is self-service?” she asked me with frown creases carved into her pale forehead.

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you have to bag your own stuff.” Sylvia nodded toward the end of the counter.

With wide eyes I looked at the enormous pile of items and wondered where it had all come from and how it had accumulated into this giant mountain of
stuff
“Oh,” I muttered, as if this wasn’t such a huge challenge. But the truth was, I wanted to bolt just then. I wanted to turn away from this rude woman, whose drab brown roots needed a serious touch-up to match her brassy blond bleach job, and I wanted to dash out of that run-down grocery store and leap into my car and drive far, far away. This was nothing like the organic gourmet grocery where Geoffrey preferred that we shop.

“The sacks are down there.” She gave her thumb a downward jerk to point to some holders where piles of brown paper bags were nested.

I pulled out a bag and struggled to open it, shaking it and snapping
it until it finally seemed ready to receive the contents. Then I looked for a place to set the sack, but the counter was full of groceries. Finally I went and got another cart, set the bag in it, and managed to begin filling it with groceries.

Sylvia called out the total to me, watching, I felt sure, to see if I flinched at the amount. But keeping my cool, I handed her my debit card and returned to the impossible task of bagging my stuff. I had managed to fill, and badly, only two bags before she handed me back my card and a receipt. Then she walked over and stood with her hands on her hips just watching me.

“Good grief,” she said. “It looks like you’ve never even bagged groceries before.”

I looked up at her, noticing that her blue eyes looked red and strained, then I shook my head. “You’re right, I haven’t.”

“Well, look,” she said, reaching for a bag and opening it in one graceful snap. “You gotta put the heavy stuff on the bottom.” She grabbed several cans of soup in one hand, then planted them into the corners of the bag. “See?” Then she reached for some boxes and wedged those in between. And on she went until the bag was not only completely full, but it looked solid enough not to slump over like a tired rag doll, the way mine were doing.

“Thanks,” I muttered, trying to follow her example.

“You new in town?” she asked as she helped me bag the rest of my groceries.

“Not exactly, but I’m moving into a new apartment today,” I confessed. She seemed to study me for a moment. “Divorce?” I shrugged. “I’m not sure yet.” She nodded. “He cheat on you?”

I must’ve looked startled then. “Well, no. That’s not really—”

She smiled then. “It’s okay, honey. But just take it from me, it’ll get
better.” Then she laughed. “Eventually, anyway. It’ll probably get a whole lot worse first.”

I thanked her as I filled the last grocery bag, then heaped it on the pile already threatening to spill from the cart. I hoped I wouldn’t find too many broken items once I got home.
Home?
I thought as I wheeled the cart through the deserted parking lot toward my Range Rover. What a concept. Then moving more slowly and intentionally, as if I were beginning a marathon, I started to pace myself as I loaded, one by one, the bags into the back.

Driving toward the apartment complex, I peered up and down the mostly vacant streets, hoping I might spy Jacob’s Subaru parked along a side street somewhere. I wondered if he’d be sleeping in the back tonight. Hopefully, he’d remembered to pack his sleeping bag, although it was still pretty warm outside. Or, more likely, he’d crashed at a “friend’s” place. Most likely a friend with the kind of answers that helped Jacob to temporarily forget all his troubles. For the first time in my life, I think I actually longed for some sort of chemical escape myself. Something to take me away and end this pain. Then I remembered a story I’d read in the local newspaper. It was about a mother of teenagers who’d been arrested on drug charges. But it seemed to me she had introduced her children to the crud—not the other way around. I considered stopping for a bottle of wine as I passed by the liquor store but couldn’t bring myself to face another clerk like Sylvia.

I must’ve been up half the night unloading bag after bag of groceries from the car and carrying them up the flight of stairs. Then I opened all the cupboards, which weren’t many, and searched for places to put all these various and sundry items I had felt so compelled to purchase. Of course, my new kitchen was about half the size of what had been my master bathroom. And naturally, there wasn’t enough space.

So, like a crazy woman, I paced back and forth, trying to figure out where to put everything. It was like trying to work a giant jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces. Finally I gave up and decided to give the kitchen a thorough scrubdown with the new Super Orange cleaner and package of sponges that I found in the bottom of one of the paper sacks. I felt certain this apartment hadn’t been cleaned in decades, and at least this was something I could do.

I think it was three in the morning when I finally stopped scrubbing. And then, without giving too much thought to order or organization, I simply stowed everything I could in whatever space I could find and left the remaining items sitting on the counter like orphans.

Then I sat down in my green canvas camp chair and began creating a list of other things I would need. I wrote this on the back of my grocery receipt, only listing the basic things, like clothes hangers and a laundry basket and maybe a few dishes and a pan or two. After all, I told myself as I got ready for bed and realized I had no towels or washcloths or even a shower curtain, I didn’t really deserve anything more than the basics. Of
course, I might do this thing differently if Jacob ever came to live here with me. I would at least want to have another chair or two. And maybe a coffee maker.

I finally unfurled my foam pad and navy blue sleeping bag and, wearing my T-shirt and old jogging shorts for pajamas, crawled into this makeshift bed and realized that I’d forgotten to get a pillow. I wondered if inmates were afforded the luxury of a pillow, and if so, it would probably not be one of goose down or even feathers. But perhaps tomorrow I could sneak back into my house—rather, Geoffrey’s house—and retrieve my favorite pillow. There were just some things a person shouldn’t have to do without.

I awoke to the sounds of loud voices and footsteps stomping overhead. It took me a moment to remember where I was as I crawled out of the twisted sleeping bag and rubbed my very stiff neck. My watch said it was six thirty, but I wasn’t sure whether it was morning or night until I looked out the window and decided it must be morning. I shuffled into the kitchen and looked around. The plywood cabinets and plastic counter-top looked bleaker than ever in the morning light. Among the leftover grocery items still sitting on the counter was a bag of coffee beans, Morning Blend. But, of course, I realized now that I had no grinder. Not only that, I had no coffee maker. I sat down in my camp chair with the bag of beans in my hands and began to cry. What had I done to deserve this?

Finally the tears subsided, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might be losing my mind. What if right now Geoffrey and Jacob were sitting at the breakfast table, enjoying a fresh brewed cup of coffee and discussing college plans for Jacob? What if Jacob had returned home last night, sorry for all he’d put us through, and what if he’d apologized to his father, and they had hugged each other and cried and said,“Let’s start over again.” What if? What if I was sitting here like a crazy woman, torturing myself for no good reason, and meanwhile all was well at home? Or even
worse, what if all was well at home except for the fact that no one knew where I’d disappeared to, and what if I was now the source of stress in our lives. I dashed to my little bedroom and began haphazardly pulling on my clothes. Then I ran down to my car and quickly drove across town to apologize to my husband and son, to plead a sort of temporary insanity.

But when I got home, no one was there. And judging by the neatly made bed in our room, I knew no one had been there. I checked the message machine and found two messages. I pushed the button and waited.

“Hi, Glennis. This is Sherry, just checking to see how you’re doing. You’ve been on my heart these past couple of days, and I’m praying for you. Give me a call. We should do lunch or something.”

I thought about Sherry as I waited for the next message. Perhaps I should give her a call.

“This is Russ at the lumberyard, looking for Jacob this morning. If he doesn’t show for work today, you can tell him he doesn’t need to come back here at all.” And, almost like an exclamation point, this was followed by a loud beep.

I erased both messages and looked around the kitchen, amazed at how huge it was compared to the tiny apartment. Two completely different worlds. I could hear Rufus whining at the back door. He probably hadn’t been fed since yesterday. And the cat, Winnie, was nowhere to be seen. But that wasn’t so unusual. I went out to the laundry room and refilled Rufus’s water and food dishes as his tail beat happily against my leg.

“How’re you doing, old boy?” I asked, leaning over to pet his scraggly coat. Rufus was a terrier mix mutt that Jacob had brought home about ten years ago. He’d found the abandoned puppy on the street, and, despite Geoffrey’s allergies, there was no way I could deny my son this sad-eyed puppy. It had been agreed that Rufus’s domain would become the laundry room, a place where Geoffrey never went anyway, and we would install a doggy door that led to the backyard. Jacob would be the primary caregiver,
although that didn’t last long. Soon I was tending to not only Rufus but also Winnie, the Blue Persian kitten that Sarah insisted she must have after our no-pet rules had been set aside for Rufus. The same restrictions applied to Sarah’s cat, but after a while the pets seemed to come and go with more freedom, and Geoffrey’s allergies seemed to magically disappear. I wondered now if he’d ever really had them at all. Perhaps it had just been a convenient excuse to exist in a pet-free world during the first fifteen years of our marriage. I refilled the cat’s water and food dishes and went back into the house.

I walked into the sunlit family room and looked around. The room was so perfect that it looked like a page torn from a design catalog. Of course, this had more to do with Geoffrey than myself. His taste had always ruled in our home, even when we were first married and his grandparents had generously purchased our first home as a wedding gift for us. Certainly, it was a modest home, at least compared to this one, but at the time it had seemed like a small palace to me. It was a brand-new, one-story ranch with three bedrooms and two baths. Perhaps it wasn’t exactly the sort of house I would’ve chosen, but then I hadn’t been asked. Just the same, I remember feeling a bit like a princess as I walked from room to room admiring the squeaky-clean newness of it all. I had imagined picking out warm and cozy furnishings, perhaps in the country style that was becoming popular at the time. I told Geoffrey my ideas, but he just smiled in a knowing sort of way.

“No need to worry about that,” he’d assured me. “My grandmother is doing a little redecorating, and she wants to give us most of her old furniture.”

Now I’d been to his grandparents’ expensive hilltop home several times, and while it was quite lovely and the furnishings were top of the line, they were definitely
not
my style. “But isn’t everything blue?” I’d asked. “And dated?”

“Blue is my favorite color,” he told me. “And the designs are classic.”

I suppose it was my own fault that I never admitted blue was among my least favorite colors. I’d always felt it was cold and formal and nothing like the sort of interiors I’d have chosen. But I convinced myself it was kind of his grandparents, and Geoffrey had assured me this would allow us to save money for our next home as well as the new furnishings to go with it. Meanwhile, I’d put up with blue velvet couches and complementing chairs, formal dark wood pieces, Asian lamps, and those numerous Oriental carpets I actually learned to appreciate in time.

And, true to Geoffrey’s promise, we eventually built this house and furnished it with new pieces. My plan, at that time, had been to select some attractive but comfortable neutral-tone furnishings, to bring in some informal antiques in golden oak tones, and then accent with warm and vibrant colors. But Geoffrey had seen it differently. After numerous long-winded discussions during which I was reminded that our home wasn’t just for family enjoyment but also for entertaining clients, I finally succumbed to his design plan. And that was how our new home came to be furnished with two low-slung navy blue leather couches along with a number of other very contemporary pieces Geoffrey had found at a Scandinavian design store. He’d been assisted by a tall blond woman named Ingrid, who I suspected had made up the name as well as the accent to go along with the job. Naturally, I’d kept these thoughts to myself.

The only things I really liked about our interior design was the rich color of the oak floors and the old Oriental carpets that I had managed to convince Geoffrey to keep. “For sentimental purposes,” I’d told him. Of course, I also liked the high vaulted ceilings and wide expanse of windows that looked down the hill to the city below. But those navy blue sofas always left me feeling chilled. And even in the summertime, I’d find myself reaching for the thick chenille blanket that I always kept handy It was a bright cranberry color that Geoffrey said looked garish but I liked. I picked up the blanket now, holding it close to me.

“What are you doing?” I asked myself. My voice sounded hollow and empty, lost in all the space of the house. Then I wrapped the chenille throw around me and sat down on the leather sofa and attempted to think, trying to remember what exactly had brought me to this place of confusion and unrest. Surely it wasn’t just the condition of my garden.

I knew that Geoffrey and I had argued yesterday. Nothing new about that, at least not lately, not since our son had begun pushing and pulling us in every imaginable direction. But then Geoffrey had engaged with Jacob, even to the point of getting physical, and then he’d told him in no uncertain terms to leave our home. He’d actually told our son he wasn’t welcome here anymore. That was what had cut so deeply. But was that really why I’d left? I felt confused, unsure about almost everything. What was it that had really made me give up like this?

Of course I’d been devastated to discover the sorry state of my garden—not unlike the sorry state of my life. But that was no reason to leave my husband of twenty-five years. Only a crazy woman would do that. Really, I had to ask myself, what was going on here? Was this how people ended up in mental hospitals? I stood up and walked over to the door of Geoffrey’s study. As always, everything was in its perfect place. I had usually avoided this room, had never felt comfortable or welcome there. But today I walked in and looked around. I sat down in the big leather chair at his desk and tried to imagine what it felt like to be Geoffrey Harmon. And for the first time in a long time I wondered if he was happy. He sure didn’t seem happy. And more and more lately he seemed to be particularly unhappy with me. It was as if I could never quite measure up to his expectations. I absently pulled open the top drawer of his desk to find everything in its place. But a blank, white envelope caught my attention. I opened it to find several photographs that appeared to have been taken at city hall, apparently on Geoffrey’s last birthday (his fiftieth) since he was the center of attention and standing in front of a big sheet cake. I flipped
through the photos and started to replace the envelope when something stopped me. I took a second look at a photo where Geoffrey was standing with the city manager, Judith Ramsey. Several other city employees were in the picture as well, but something about the expressions on both Judith’s and Geoffrey’s faces stopped me. They both looked so happy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Geoffrey looking that happy Or maybe, like so many other things, I’d missed it.

I put the photos back in the envelope, replacing them in their exact spot in the desk, and in that same moment it occurred to me with the kind of clarity I hadn’t experienced in some time that
Geoffrey didn’t love me anymore
. Crazy as it seemed, I felt certain that was the truth. And I felt just as certain that it was time to go. The chenille blanket was still wrapped around my shoulders, and I realized that it really belonged to me and that I was going to take it with me. But why stop at the blanket? There were several items that Geoffrey would never want or need or even miss. Things I had picked out to comfort me and make this house more to my tastes, cozier.

And so I found a few boxes and laundry baskets, and I began to gather candles, pillows, linens, dishes—special things I had selected and Geoffrey had tolerated—and to take those things out to the Range Rover.

“Looks like you’re moving,” called my neighbor Elaine as she watered a pot of petunias in front of her house.

“Just clearing out a few things,” I called back to her. I wasn’t eager to have all of Stafford in on our personal business just yet. And everyone knew that Elaine Hodges was something of a gossip.

“You getting rid of those?” she called, coming closer, the hose hanging limply in her hand as she peered at the stack of jewel-toned pillows in my arms.