Little Black Lies (3 page)

“That's what I meant.”

I shrug; this is possible. “Pretty good.” We park her chair by the flowering crab tree, water beading on the red berries like jewels. “Actually, to be honest, things aren't so terrific right now.”

“Why?” she asks.

“You want the list?” I laugh. “Or just the top three?”

She laughs with me. “Let's go for the top three.”

“Okay. One”—I lift my finger to count off—“my attending is a jerk who hates me for some reason. Two, I miss Jean Luc. And three, I'm living with my brother.”

“Jean Luc?” she asks. “Who's that?”

“You remember,” I say. “The chemist, from Yale.”

She looks blank.

“The Frenchman?” I remind her.

“Oh,” she says with delight. “The Frenchman!” I told my mom about Jean Luc when she was still on this side of lucidity enough to be her old, wisecracking self. She usually teases me about him ten times per visit. Mom takes my hand. Despite the cold, her hand is warm. A young hand, I realize, not arthritic or knotty. Smooth, too young for this newly old mind. “Things will get better,” she says.

I squeeze her hand in response, then she lets it go. My mom, despite her lapsing mind, knows how to empathize. It comes naturally to her, more than it does to me with my patients. She empathizes with the nursing-home residents, too. I catch her counseling them, advising them about some problem or another, though neither usually remembers the conversation the next day. Maybe it's her social work training from all those years ago kicking in.

“My coworkers are nice,” I add, to make her feel better.

“Now that's something,” she encourages, smiling. My mom always did look on the bright side of things.

I move to sit down next to her on the cold iron bench, sick of towering over her chair. The wind kicks up the leaves again and starts the wind chime tinkling in fits, spinning on the branch of the little tree. I recognize that wind chime as a creation from Craft Wednesday a few weeks ago. My mom was quite proud of hers.

“Scotty told me you and the Frenchman were getting married in Paris.”

“Nope. He's pulling your leg.”

Now she laughs, her low, rumbling, Lauren Bacall laugh. I have seen men fall in love with this laugh. “My son is funny, isn't he?”

“Hilarious.” I hug my sweater against the breeze. The wind chime twirls and twirls, tinkling out its song in mad spasms. “So I had my nightmare again.”

She turns her head to me. “What nightmare?”

“The fire.”

“Oh,” she says, pulling her blanket in closer. “I thought you were over that.”

“Yeah, so did I.”

Mom stares ahead at the tree, the wind chime still going.

“Sam thinks it's because I'm back in Buffalo.”

“Who's Sam?”

“Sam, my psychiatrist.”

“I thought Dr. Lowry was your psychiatrist.”

“Yeah, when I was, like, ten. I've been through a few now, remember, Mom?”

She nods. “I guess.”

“I've been seeing Sam since I've been back home. I like him.”

She rubs her arms. “I'm getting cold, honey. Ready to go back in?”

“Sure,” I say, fighting a yawn. I have to get home to study anyway. So we wind our way back into the Victorian palace, past the disinfectant smells, the nurses laughing at their station, back to Mom's small, rose-pink-carpeted room, with her roommate mercifully gone.

“Home,” I say, depositing her in her favorite corner rocker. I smooth the blanket around her and gather up my things.

“See you later, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Tanya,” she answers, her eyes closing.

I stare at her a moment as she descends right into sleep, her breath evening into a soft snore. Tanya? I jiggle my car keys, debating, but don't have the heart to wake her. And the whole drive home the name burrows itself in my head: Tanya. Who the hell is Tanya?

“No, I don't know any Tanya,” Scotty says, clearing up dishes from the next table. “It's probably just someone from her past. She's not exactly all there, Zoe, in case you haven't noticed.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” I answer, handing him another plate, but he's already charging off to the register to take an order. I pick up my coffee cup, and the bronze foam leaf twirls around in a circle. The baristas do make an artistic cup of java here. The first sip is heavenly, though I smear the leaf and end up with a milk mustache. Raindrops squiggle down the window, racing each other. The weather has gone from blue skies to gray, foggy drizzle in a couple of hours. The smell of nutmeg rises from the mug, and I take another warm, foamy sip.

I could sit here all day, staring out the window in my favorite settee by the hearth, procrastination being one of my favorite pastimes. It takes all my will, but I peel my eyes off the raindrops scurrying down the window and focus on the book in my hands, smoothing down the first page of the first chapter.

I've never been called charming, magnetic, or gifted at flattering others. So I think I'm okay as far as antisocial goes.

“You good? Or can I get you anything?” Eddie asks.

“I'm great, thanks.”

This is the longest string of words Eddie has ever said to me. To call Eddie “shy” is being kind. He is not far from “Cluster C Avoidant” in the personality disorder chapter. Reportedly Eddie has a crush on me. I take this with a mountainous grain of salt, however, coming from my brother. Eddie is a type of handsome: pale, lanky, with a ponytail and leaf tattoos vining up his arms. Being six feet, five inches, he is taller than I am, so he likely gets asked, “What's the weather like up there?” ten times a day as well, though I am not sure how much else we have in common. Eddie likes philosophy and Russian poetry; again, per Scotty. I haven't thought much about Russian poetry or philosophy, other than as a risk factor for suicide.

High-pitched laughter rings out over at the bar, mixed with the noise of beans grinding. Ditzy laughter, from girls hunched over their phones, rapidly texting. Scotty is head barista today, flirting with as many women as possible. Scotty has a way with the ladies, as they say. I'm not sure why. He's on the taller side, but not as tall as I am. And he's skinny, boyish-looking. But if I had to venture a guess for his success with women, it would be his eyebrows. Expressive, with a hint of James Dean.

The Coffee Spot is a place that prides itself on not being Starbucks, which isn't a grand achievement, but it does have a certain charm. If Sam's office is a yacht, and the nursing home a Victorian tearoom, then the Coffee Spot is a funky bachelor pad. The walls are mocha brown, as are the stained wooden floors, but everything else is without color scheme or theme, except maybe “cool.” The furniture is all secondhand and beat-up but comfortable: mismatched chairs and sofas, including my favorite eggplant settee by the fireplace. Local avant-garde artwork covers the walls. The bathrooms don't say Women or Men but are labeled by bronzed torsos, that kind of place. This was Scotty's college job, which soon became his actual job when he flunked out of the University at Buffalo. He claims this was due to the stress of dealing with Mom. I claim this was due to smoking too much dope. So we have a difference of opinion.

Funny trivia fact: Tattoos used to be included as a sign of an antisocial personality. Now they're just a sign of trying to fit in. If tattoos were still part of the diagnosis criterion, everyone at the Coffee Spot would be on their
way to jail, including Scotty, who has several tattoos strategically circling various muscles. My mom tried to warn him off ink by telling him he couldn't be buried in a Jewish cemetery with any marks on his body. “Give me a break, Mom,” he said. “Every fucking person in Jerusalem has a tattoo.” This was after his summer trip to Israel, which had the unintended effect of making him more rebellious and less religious, if this was possible. “Language, Scotty!” my mom yelled, which is something she said a hundred times a day.

Laughter wafts over the bar again. This time it's an older woman giggling with Scotty. When I say older, I mean older for Scotty. That makes her about thirty
.

“Pumpkin spice latte,” Eddie calls out, and the woman shimmies up to grab it. Pumpkin spice latte? How anyone could choke down that swill is beyond me. The woman is in a cheap, blue business suit. She has red hair and freckles, completely not Scotty's type. Scotty goes for girls with implants and skinny arms, spray-on tans and white teeth. Barbie girls. Those are the girls who usually end up in Scotty's room, a red handkerchief tied jauntily around the handle to let me know to knock first. He goes for girls who shop at Abercrombie, not Dress Barn. But then again, he appears to be flirting back all the same. Getting her number even, I'll be damned.

“Could I get you anything else, Zoe?” Eddie asks. He sounds petrified. I don't think he's ever called me by name before.

“Still good, Eddie. Thanks.” I hold up my cup in evidence, still half-full. Or half-empty, you know, depending.

He nods and looks as if he is about to say something, then veers off to another table as fast as his lanky legs will take him. Poor guy. If he had an eighth of Scotty's moves, he'd be shacked up right now, bright red handkerchief tied around a doorknob, reading Russian poetry to some dewy-eyed damsel. Probably not me. I haven't been dewy-eyed for a while.

Dum-dum-dum-dah.

Beethoven's Fifth. This is the text tone for Jean Luc. My heart always thumps when I hear that tune, pathetic as that may be. Scotty programmed the text tone as a lark. Scotty does not like Jean Luc, whom he routinely refers to as “Frog-Boy.” My brother has never actually met Jean Luc, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Maybe it's a Freudian thing.

Vous
ê
tes mon petit chou,
the text reads. Literally, “You are my little cabbage.” Jean Luc knows I find this endearment hysterical.

How's my little broccoli?
I write back.

Skype?

Sure.
I move my coffee over to boot up my laptop. In a minute, Jean Luc's face fills up the screen. I never tire of looking at Jean Luc. I am not proud of this superficiality, but it's a fact. He is beautiful, Ralph Lauren–model beautiful: brooding eyes, ropy muscles from years of soccer, and dirty-blond, unkempt bangs that always fall into his eyes. When I first met Jean Luc, winter break of my last year of medical school, I spent the entire day trying to classify him. He is a curious mix of awkward, clueless, and handsome. You could mistake him for snobby, but he's actually shy. Aloof, when he's just solving chemistry problems in his head. And then there is his beauty, which is unavoidable, though he doesn't seem to notice. But women notic
e
. They zone in on him in a bar, attracted to the Darwinian fittest, the peacock with the most outstanding feathers.

Yet he picked me—the tall one—much to the shock and unalloyed dismay of the other female contestants. This fact surprises me to this day because I am not beautiful. It's not that I'm bad-looking, just forgettable. It's like once you get past the six-foot thing, it's hard to remember anything else. If I robbed a liquor store at gunpoint, the victim would tell the criminal sketch artist, “She was over six feet tall,” then be at a loss. No one remembers my eye color (hazel, whatever hazel means, sometimes brown, sometimes green) or hair color (brown, but just brown, not chestnut brown, for instance) and freckles (which I'm told are cute, but not in an
I want to
bed you
kind of way). But Jean Luc disagreed with my assessment. He said I was too stupid to see how lovely I am, which was the first time I have ever been called either stupid or lovely.

“How's life in DC?” I ask.

“Going well,” he answers. “The government job is promising.” Jean Luc had his doubts about going into government work instead of academia, but the tenure prospects weren't encouraging last year.

A girl runs behind Jean Luc on the screen, wrapped in a towel like she's fresh out of the shower
.
Her blond hair is slicked back and dripping. “Sorry!” she calls in a singsong voice.

“Did I interrupt something?” I ask him.

“That's Melanie.” He pronounces it in the French way,
Meh-lah-NEE
, with the accent on the last syllable. “Robbie's girlfriend,” he explains. Robbie is his flatmate, someone he met from the classifieds for the apartment. Robbie is quintessential DC: power ties, lunch meetings at pricey restaurants where he might be seen, twice-a-day workouts. He is everything Jean Luc is not. Jean Luc widens his eyes and mouths. “She never leaves.”

This gets a chuckle from me, a relieved chuckle. We talk awhile. I tell him about everything: my newest patient—the lovely Sofia Vallano, the annoying Dr. Grant, my mother's fading mind, Scotty's latest dalliances, the return of the nightmare. Everything, in short, except how much I miss him. Because I don't know how to tell him that. It is logical, he explained, that we should date other people when we are miles apart. And Jean Luc is logical. He thrives in the reliable world of chemistry, a world of absolutes. One night, as we sat in damp grass and gaped at the fireworks springing up against the sky, he pointed in the air and said, “You see, fireworks are chemistry. You mix them together, and they explode. It is predictable. It is…” He searched for the word in English. “Accountable. People are not always accountable, but chemistry”—he smiled, as if he were talking about a lover—“chemistry is always accountable.”