Why Men Lie (26 page)

Effie, exhausted, said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t have to understand,” Molly said. “Just let your feeling for the man you think he is take over. Because that’s who he really is. And you were one lucky broad the day you connected with that man. Don’t blow it now.”

Effie couldn’t trust herself to survive another sentence. “I’ll try,” she said.

“You have to.”

His phone rang and rang. And then she realized he’d disconnected his answering machine.

When Sextus called her at the office, he offered her two options: lunch or dinner. “I tried you at home a bunch of times, but nobody answers.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Simple,” he replied. “Lunch or dinner. Say dinner and I’ll consider it a date and arrive with all kinds of expectations. Lunch? No strings attached.”

For a moment she actually considered dinner. “Lunch,” she said.

“I’m having lunch with your father tomorrow,” she told Cassie.

“Lovely,” said Cassie. “When did he arrive?”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t been in touch.”

“He hasn’t been in touch for ages. I wasn’t even sure if he was going to turn up for the tenth.”

“He wouldn’t miss your wedding.”

“He’s probably just here to get his oil changed with that silly Susan.”

“Cassie, for God’s sake …”

“In any case, when you see him, tell him I want you both to walk me down the aisle, if you think you’re up to that.”

“Of course I’m up to that. We’re actually on quite good terms.”

Sextus winced when she mentioned Stella even before the waiter came to take their order. She’d planned it that way. There would
be no pussy-footing, no wasting time. Just get it out in the open and get it over with.

“I thought we were here to discuss Cassie’s wedding.”

“Indulge me,” she said. “What was that about, anyway?”

“I have no idea what that was about,” he said. “That’s as much as I can tell you.”

He was staring around the restaurant, his face a study in unhappiness. “Stella is one of two or three women I’ve met in my lifetime who actually impressed me.”

“Impressed?”

“I don’t know how to explain it.”

“How did she impress you?”

He stared at her for about half a minute. “She reminded me of you.”

“Oh, come on,” Effie laughed. “Spare me.”

“It’s true,” he said. “Your personalities are similar. I was attracted to her. Met her in town. Had coffee. Talked. Decided to meet again. Anyway, it was never going to be any kind of a relationship.”

“So what prevented a
relationship?
”

“I didn’t impress Stella as much as she impressed me.”

“And what does it take to impress Stella?”

“I wish I knew.”

They stared at each other for a while as Effie tried to maintain a rational perspective.

“So what about this young Susan?”

“Jesus.”

“Come on. Lighten up.” She summoned up her warmest smile. “Was she impressed?”

He hesitated. “Yes. As a matter of fact, she was quite impressed.”

“I suppose she’ll be coming to the wedding.”

“No.”

“Oh?”

“I haven’t talked to her since I went back.”

“Well, well.”

“I realized when I looked at Cassie and what’s his name—Ray whatever—how … what it must have looked like, me and Susan. Kind of indecent, I thought at the time.”

“Indecent?”

“I don’t think that anymore—not about them. I wish them well. But for myself … I know what I want in my life, and it isn’t someone who still has Barbie dolls.”

Effie laughed, and this time it wasn’t the managed mirth that she’d been deploying to control the conversation but a spontaneous explosion of glee.

He shook his head. “This guy Ray, does he know what he’s getting into?”

“Cassie, in case you haven’t noticed, is way beyond the Barbie dolls. She’s nearly thirty years old.”

“Still. How old is Ray?”

“Late fifties, early sixties.”

“You mark my words. He’s going to turn you into a grandmother. You can tell by the gleam in his eye,” Sextus said. “He’s a baby-making machine. I’ve known old rams like that.”

“She wants both of us to walk her down the aisle.”

“So there’s going to be an aisle?”

“Yes. Duncan will officiate. We give her away?”

“Sure,” he said.

A waiter took their orders. He decided to have a whisky, double. She had a glass of wine. He had made her laugh, and it reminded her of what she’d missed in the long aftermath of their breakup, years ago. Humourless Conor. A series of brainy, insightful, tender,
sentimental, macho, stupid—you name it—flings, relationships, one-night stands, not one of whom could make her laugh the way Sextus Gillis could. It was the laughter that came out of … 
Oh my God
, she thought.
Compatibility?
It was a terrible thought, but it was true.

Then he ordered a second double.

Near the end of lunch he produced a briefcase and extracted from it a large package. He placed it between them on the table.

“I want you to take this with you,” he said. “Keep it. If you ever get around to reading it, feel free to burn it afterwards.”

“What is it?”

“I told you about it. It was going to be a memoir.”

“A memoir.”

“It started after a weekend I spent with John in ’83. We talked through our difficulties, explored a lot of places that had always been off limits. It became a serial thing. We’d talk from time to time. Pooled a lot of understanding and came up with what I thought was a new appreciation of what made us the way we were. Are. All of us. You included. Duncan. Our whole confused generation, in a way. The mutant spawn of a rotten century.”

“Those had to be some conversations.”

“Whatever. I did a lot of research. Phoned people, wrote to people. Old war veterans, etcetera. A few years back I started putting together quite a yarn about this interesting character, namely me.”

“I’m not sure I want to read it.”

“Seriously,” he said.

“If it’s about you, why were you interested in the war? Your father wasn’t in the war.”

“But yours was, and Uncle Sandy was. And it affected you and
Duncan. It affected John big time. And I assume it will have affected your daughter.”

Effie shrugged. “None of this should come as a surprise. We don’t come out of nothing when we’re born.”

“Right.” He stared at her for what seemed like a long time. “I’m tempted to order another drink,” he said.

She put her hand on his. “Bad idea. And I have a meeting this afternoon.”

“I want to give you a heads-up,” he said suddenly. “If you read this thing.”

She stiffened. His face was flushed and he was sitting poker straight. He looked away from her.

“You get particular about small details when you write something autobiographical. So I started getting particular about us, when we did what, where, etcetera. If you follow me.”

She frowned. “Why on earth does that matter for a goddamn book?”

“It doesn’t really,” he said. “I just started obsessing about Cassie. Was there a chance that—”

“Jesus,” she said. “I can’t believe—”

“So I went to a doctor.”

“You did what?”

“I had a test, and do you know what?”

She looked at her watch, suddenly desperate to leave.

“I was borderline,” he said, almost angrily. “I was just above the threshold of sterility.”

“So why bring this up now?” She was half angry, half full of pity for him. “This was what? Nearly thirty years ago. So even if you weren’t class-A breeding stock, obviously I am. The outcome was okay, wouldn’t you agree?”

He nodded.

“How come you never mentioned this when we got back together a couple of years ago?”

“Because I persuaded myself that my weak, watery sperm had been enough to do the job. The evidence was there. She’s the picture of a Gillis. There was an old photograph of my Gillis grandmother at home, when Grandma was a little girl. They’re identical. So I put it out of my head.”

“Okay. So?”

“She was also John’s grandmother.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“You know John got married.”

“Yes.”

“You probably don’t know that his wife is knocked up.”

“So what?”

“She was up the stump
before
the wedding. The word is that’s why they got married at all. Makes it kind of hard for me to continue my delusion.”

“Sextus,” she said. “What the hell difference does it make?”

“Well, you tell me. Who is Cassie’s real father?”

She stared at him for a long time, weighing possible answers. And there were many. But then there was a voice:
It’s only what we know that matters …

“You are,” she said quietly.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“That’s up to you.”

“I didn’t mean to let this get away from me like that. I’m sorry. I spoiled your lunch.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “You made me laugh. I haven’t laughed for ages.”

“Oh?” he said. “Don’t tell me that you and Jesus are having problems.”

“Jesus?”

“That’s what we used to call JC years ago. Because of the JC thing. But also because he’d be the last of us to get in trouble. But when he did, he had a miraculous way of getting out of it.”

And she laughed again. They’d called him Jesus. And she laughed some more as she walked up University to her meeting.

S
he stared at the manila envelope for a long time before she opened it and extracted the first few pages.
Why Men Lie
, he’d called it. She smiled, wanted to ask, “Where’s the punctuation mark?” Or was it a statement, something he was now prepared to disclose to someone he had lied to. She doubted that. She stuffed the pages back inside the envelope, then placed it back in her briefcase.
This belongs at home
, she thought. It wasn’t something for a nosy student or colleague or janitor to find. She surveyed the tiny office, books and manuscripts piled everywhere, promising the truth of one thing or another; truthful revelations about human history.

She loved her books as she loved the knowledge they bestowed. But she was afraid of what he’d written; afraid of what he knew; afraid of why and what he wanted her to know—the power his knowledge gave him.
What is the point
, she asked herself,
of knowing all the generalities if we are in the dark about our own particulars? Life is but an aggregation of particulars. But must we know them all? Is forgetfulness not merciful?
She well knew how one particular of a forgotten part of life, suddenly remembered, can ruin everything.

On her desk there was a photograph of Duncan, standing on the bow of his boat. He was smiling broadly, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, arms folded. She thought of all the photos that litter people’s lives, stored in envelopes, inside boxes. No names or dates. People captured in moments that seemed important at the time. Moments of transient happiness, recorded as specific images, particulars of life that someone thought should be indelible; but without the words, the images are only mortal, as fragile as the subjects and the living memory.

She picked up the photograph of her brother and realized that she couldn’t precisely remember why or when she’d taken it—or if, in fact, she had taken it herself. Then it came back to her: Stella had given it to her. But when had Stella taken it? And what might explain that smile, a smile she knew—because she knew her brother well—to be unusual? Would there come a day when someone would invest a lot of energy and time to discover who this man was, where he was and when, and whom he was smiling at?

I could do it now
, she thought. She could inscribe that enigmatic photograph so that blind posterity would know at least that it was Duncan, perhaps that he was
Father
Duncan; that the boat was called
Jacinta
, for reasons he’d never shared with her; that the moment was recorded by a woman whose name was Stella Fortune; that she was his friend, and maybe more than that; and that she wounded him. But now Effie was in the realm of speculation, and speculation is the mother of exaggeration and untruth and suffering.

She opened the briefcase again, studied the package that contained a manuscript, said the word out loud. “Speculation.” Then she snapped the briefcase shut.

The wedding celebration was to be in the house that Ray and Cassie shared in Riverdale. It was on a quiet street not far from Walden. A Thursday night, two evenings before the marriage, Effie and Cassie were busily preparing. It would be a small event, twenty special guests, all coming to the house after the ceremony for a gathering of close friends and family.

Ray was in his den, watching television. He called out, “Effie, you should come and see this.”

It was the evening newscast, and Molly Blue was reporting on a new development in a death-row story in Huntsville, Texas. As Effie arrived in the doorway, she heard a reference to the Texas governor, who seemed to be expressing disappointment in the action of a judge somewhere. There was a photo in the corner of the TV screen, a white-haired man with a kind face, the name Sam Williams superimposed. Then a picture of a small room, not unlike a doctor’s examining room. The only furniture in the pale green room was an imposing gurney. Molly said, “The stay came through just minutes before the scheduled execution.”

Then there was a slender woman, pretty in an earnest way, talking about another effort to get the Williams case before the United States Supreme Court. The woman was identified as Sandra Bowers, attorney for the condemned man. Then JC appeared. He was smiling broadly as if, in a way, the reprieve had been for him.

Molly asked him questions and he was objective in the answers, betraying no personal concern about the killer at the centre of the drama. He spoke of “process,” alleged irregularities at trial and certain ambiguities that raised disturbing questions in the minds of many people about the legitimacy of the death penalty. Effie remembered that “legitimacy” was a word he used frequently. Then
he was gone, replaced by a group of protesters waving placards in the darkness outside what she presumed was the prison.