The Comfort of Lies: A Novel Page 3

  “Tell me.”

  “I had an affair, Jules. Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Caroline

  After five years of marriage, Peter still made love to Caroline as though realizing his life’s dream. Being the object of his lust never failed to rouse her own. Exercising on the treadmill, Caroline labored through work problems, scratching ideas in tiny journals she kept in her pockets. Riding the train to work, she caught up with medical journals; driving to visit her parents, she listened to audiobooks. Only with her husband did she remember her corporeal being. There was no other time she left her mind and lived inside her body.

  Peter thought her beautiful, he thought her sexy, and he made her believe it, if only for the moments she lay with him. She didn’t live under illusions. Much of her belief system boiled down to “What it is, is.” Caroline knew she was more wholesome than bombshell. Before Peter, she’d limited her relationships to men who marched to the same beat as she did: quiet songs, gentle dances. Peter unlocked her fervor.

  “Come on, you’re incredible,” Peter declared when she scoffed at his compliments. Where her honest doctor eyes saw wheat-colored hair not dramatic enough to call blonde, an easy-to-forget face, and a slat-like build, Peter declared her graceful and pure, and then delineated how those qualities turned him on. She knew it was her difference from every woman he’d grown up with that excited him: she was his upper-class unattainable woman—just as his unrestrained fervor, so different from the boys she grew up with, provided the same thrill for her.

  After, they lingered in the bedroom, as they did every Sunday. Coffee cups, plates covered with crumbs, and orange rinds littered their bedside tables.

  “Listen to this, Caro.” Peter cleared his throat and, using his public voice—the one he used at investor meetings—read aloud from his laptop:

  “Forecasters believe the strongest economic growth in two decades is in front of us. Businesses are investing in new plants and equipment and rehiring laid-off workers. Most economists predict 2004 should be an excellent year, and that this should be a predictor for years to come.”

  “Mmm,” Caroline responded, the words not really registering. Peter grasped financial concepts instantly, while she found economic analysis so dry that it crumbled before it traveled from her ears to her brain. “Online news?” She pulled up the covers a bit.

  “Yes, but it’s a well-regarded site. Do you know what this means?”

  “Not a clue, actually, beyond the facts as presented. But I’m sure you do.” Caroline smiled, waiting for Peter to spill his theories. He shared his thoughts as they occurred to him. Peter tended to think out loud, while Caroline let ideas percolate for days, weeks, or longer before opening them to question.

  “It means folks will be investing like crazy,” Peter said. “They’ll think they’re hopping on the money train. Do you know what that means?”

  She leaned her head on his shoulder. They were close to a match in height. “No.” He did their accounting; she kept their space in perfect order. Having disparate interests freed each of the boring and baffling portions of life. “Do you want to watch the fireworks tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, and don’t change the subject. Listen, we’re in a perfect-storm place. The naïve of the world—meaning most—will believe, once again, that uptrends in stocks and real estate will continue forever—exactly the mythology which leads to insanity in the market.”

  “Ah. Interesting. The masses moving in lockstep.” She picked up Pediatric Blood & Cancer.

  Peter pushed down the journal. “Caro, I’m not just commenting. This could be important to us.”

  Like the obedient student she’d always been, Caroline let the magazine drop in her lap and turned to her husband. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “If we time this right, we’ll have an opportunity.”

  She nodded as though she’d have some part in this, when in reality, we meant Peter, who meshed with money. Building a pile of cash excited him beyond the security and buying power it represented.

  “When the business goes public next year, I’m betting our company stock prices will soar. Everyone wants . . . ”

  Her attention wandered a little, knowing what she was going to hear: Sound & Sight Software, Peter’s company, would provide a platform for X and integrate Y, etc., etc.

  She nodded and picked up her coffee cup, trying to read the journal lying in her lap.

  “That’s why we should start looking for a baby now,” Peter said. “Do you see what I’m saying?”

  Now Caroline looked up. She clutched the handle of her mug. “What?”

  Peter put a firm hand on her knee. “Were you listening?”

  She shook her head. “Not closely enough,” she said. “Say it again. The part about the baby, not the money.”

  “But they’re very related, hon. Look: soon I’ll need to focus on business in a different way. I feel it. Now’s the time to concentrate on getting our baby. Before work explodes, before everything crashes, when I can be the one to pick up all the work left from guys who got lost in the wreckage.”

  Peter shared her love of work: both of them were busy puritans turning the wheels of life. However, to Peter, life included a family—preferably a large one. He would be a spectacular father. Caroline couldn’t imagine a better man for the job, but she didn’t long for motherhood. That twenty-four-hour-a-day enthusiasm for the activity of children wasn’t in her.

  Her own mother’s passion for Caroline and her sisters had always been evident. Caroline didn’t want to offer her own children anything less, but she lacked the instinct for self-sacrifice. Once home, she didn’t want anyone forcing her to put down her journals or interrupting her studies.

  Becoming a mother terrified her so much that Caroline could barely hide her relief when she couldn’t get pregnant, and Peter’s sperm had turned out to be the problem.

  But then Peter, in his usual style of Okay, how do I solve this problem, and how quickly can I make it go away? began investigating adoption. She’d left all the research and decision making to him, a stance he’d always accepted. Peter liked being in charge. That’s why he’d chosen identified adoption, deeming it safer. He wanted to see the mother for himself, not leave their life decisions to anonymous social workers. “Better the devil you know,” he’d declared.

  Peter researched while Caroline did something totally out of character: she went into denial. Now, once again, the truth of every matter faced her: what was, was.

  “Now?” she asked. “Really now?”

  He sat up straighter and crossed his legs, pushing away the blanket. “It’s not that I’m saying now or never, but now is the best time.”

  “I’m not sure. It’s so busy at work, and—”

  “Honey, we’ll always have a reason to say ‘Not now.’ We’ll always be busy. But we can make time, and we’ll make room.” He scanned their cramped bedroom. “Though we’ll need more space. We might as well do it all up at once, eh? Look for the right neighborhood, right schools. Find the right house. My guess? Real estate will also drop soon.”

  Caroline—calm, always-good-in-an-emergency, hard-to-ruffle Caroline—felt as though she’d have an anxiety attack if he said one more word. “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  “I love our apartment,” she said. “I love our neighborhood.”

  “We need to find a place with great schools.”

  “We can find private schools,” Caroline insisted. “Like you said, we’ll have the money. I won’t do well in the suburbs.”

  “That’s just fear talking. I know how much you hate transition, but really, you’re going to be a wonderful mother wherever we are.”

  No she wouldn’t.

  “You’re perfect. Calm and loving. Smart. You’re always grounded. I adore that about you.” He stroked her arm.

  “Grounded? How romantic.”

  “And funny. Did I mention funny?”

  She managed
a smile. “No one ever described me as funny.”

  “Oops, I meant that I was funny. And that you were smart to marry me.”

  She had been smart to marry him. He lightened her, he cosseted her, he made her into a better person—more aware of the world beyond her boundaries. But she didn’t want to change anything. Their life: she loved the way their life was now. A baby would ruin everything.

  Part 2

  AFTER

  CHAPTER 4

  Tia

  “If you give away your child, you might as well give away your legs, because you’re going to end up a cripple.”

  Tia remembered her mother’s words as she studied her daughter’s face, captured in the photographs spread over the kitchen table. In the moment, her mother had seemed cruel, but now Tia recognized her mother’s desperate attempt to cram in last bits of wisdom before dying.

  Tia ignored Sunday’s Boston Globe as she scrutinized the pictures. Each year, around her daughter’s March birthday, a blandly pleasant note and five photos arrived from Caroline Fitzgerald. She studied five-year-old Honor: cross-legged on a pink duvet, dressed up in a red velvet dress, sturdy legs pumping a swing, holding a doll, digging an ambitious hole on a sandy beach. The pictures had remained on the table since they arrived in yesterday’s mail, Tia returning repeatedly to memorize the images. Hunger to see her daughter peaked every March, when Honor’s birthday, the arrival of Honor photos, and the anniversary of Tia’s mother’s death collided.

  Tia’s fantasies of motherhood weren’t grand visions. She yearned for the comforts of simple physical and mundane mothering; daily maternal tasks such as pouring milk and braiding her daughter’s hair had become her daydreams. It seemed impossible that her daughter couldn’t feel her love on some cellular level. Tia imagined that when she had sweet thoughts of her girl, love emanated from her and entered Honor.

  She chewed on her lower lip as she lifted a close-up of Honor clutching a doll, searching for evidence of her and Nathan in the image. Honor’s dense, shiny hair reminded Tia of Nathan. Like him, Honor was heavy boned in an appealing way, like thick, rich soup. Only the child’s intense stare revealed any resemblance to Tia. She brought the picture closer, but couldn’t read Honor’s expression.

  Sometimes she prayed to be free of her yearning for Honor, but more often, Tia held that ache close. Longing was her connection to her daughter, and she couldn’t bring herself to wish it away.

  Tia splashed the tiniest drop of whiskey in her morning coffee, and then, as homage to her bad and Nathan, she spread rich salmon cream cheese on a bagel. Nathan had introduced Irish-Italian Tia to lox. He swore that Boston bagels were a farce compared to those in New York, but Tia had never known any other kind.

  Nathan also introduced her to unrequited love. Some men bruised your heart, but when they left, the damage healed. Nathan had bitten chunks clean off, and Tia feared she’d search forever for the missing pieces. She’d never be safe from him. If there were an inoculation, she’d shoot the vaccine straight up.

  Holding the bagel away from the table so no crumbs fell on the photos, Tia studied the top image. Her daughter looked a lifetime older at five than she had at four, but how could Tia judge? She possessed only a vague knowledge of children.

  Everything her mother had predicted about losing Honor had come true.

  The thought made whiskey a perfect companion for her bagel.

  Her mother had died just days before Honor was born. Tia last saw Nathan the day she’d shared the news of her—their—pregnancy. The losses braided tighter each year, until today when Tia couldn’t think of anything except how stupid she’d been to ignore her mother’s wisdom and how much she wished she could somehow tell her how sorry she was for not telling the whole truth.

  • • •

  The moment Tia arrived at her office Monday morning, she opened the windows, knowing that when Katie arrived, her coworker would wrap her cardigan tight and stare at Tia as if they worked in Antarctica, when, in fact, whispers of spring blew over the chipped windowsill.

  Good scents were rare at the Jamaica Plain Senior Advocate Center, where Tia worked. Hope was not in bountiful supply. Each day, Tia fought a battle against caving in to her clients’ sadness. The greatest gift she offered them was the strength and invincibility of her youth—she knew that—but she feared that if she wasn’t careful, instead of inspiring her clients, she’d become a geriatric twenty-nine-year-old, groaning when she rose from a chair and moaning from self-pity. Perhaps this was Katie’s problem also: only thirty-six, and already she shivered when the temperature went lower than seventy degrees.

  Katie entered, shuddering. “Brr.”

  “Should I put the heat on?” Tia dreaded Katie’s disapproving clucks.

  “I’ll be okay.” Katie shook as if coming in from a blizzard. “What did you do this weekend?”

  “Not much.” Tia closed the window.

  “We took the kids to the Cape.” Katie exhaled as though she usually spent her weekends building homes with Habitat for Humanity.

  Tia knew how to make Katie happy. “You deserved a break,” she said as she sat at her battered metal desk.

  “Thanks for taking the messages.” Katie gave a delicate shiver and reached for the pink paper Tia offered. They were equals at the agency, both counselors for the elderly clients, but Katie made it clear that with her master’s degree in social work, she considered herself superior to Tia and her bachelor’s in psychology. Katie’s palatial Beacon Hill home dwarfed Tia’s one-bedroom apartment in Jamaica Plain. Katie thanked Tia for assistance as though Tia were her receptionist.

  “Whose picture?” Katie plucked at the shiny photo sticking out from Tia’s worn address book.

  “My cousin’s baby.” Tia grabbed at the photo, but Katie held it out of reach.

  Katie peered at the picture. “Cute. Pretty eyes. A little pudgy, though.”

  Tia snatched Honor from Katie’s hand. “What’s wrong with you? She’s just a little kid.”

  “Obesity’s a huge issue. You’ve never worried about weight, I bet. You’re thin. Like me.” Katie ran her hands down her sides. “I watch my kids like crazy. Jerry’s family runs chunky.”

  Tia tightened her lips and tossed the picture in the trash, anxious to remove Honor from sight and out of conversation.

  “What are you doing?” Katie stepped forward as though ready to rescue the photograph.

  “I have too much clutter.” Tia’s stomach clutched as the picture fell.

  Her daughter was only twenty miles away in the suburb of Dover, but it might as well be millions. Millions of dollars and millions of opportunities Tia shouldn’t take from Honor, who’d get privileges Tia never knew. Bars, not parklands, had dotted South Boston, a mainly Irish neighborhood where she got to be exotic simply because her father’s Italian side colored her mother’s Irish genes, giving Tia pale skin and near-black hair. Her mother used to make the sign of the cross as they walked by taverns Tia’s father patronized before he disappeared, whispering advice as she crossed herself.

  “Forget these men,” her mother would say, lifting her chin toward a gang of boys hanging on the corner. “Find a Jewish man. They make the best husbands.” Her mother’s low murmur conveyed the shame she felt—shame that her husband, Tia’s father, had left them, and maybe shame that her words betrayed Southie. Her mother had felt disloyal when she strayed from South Boston’s casual anti-Semitism. Her mother grew up in Southie, and she raised her daughter there, but she worked at Brandeis University—“Jew U.,” as many in Southie called the school. Tia’s mother didn’t side with any of what she called “that ridiculousness,” but she loved her loyal neighbors too much to take them to task.

  Perhaps Jewish Nathan made a good Jewish husband for his half-Jewish wife, one of the few details he’d shared about the sainted-wife-who-will-never-be-mentioned. God knows that if one measured goodness by his panicked reaction when Tia hinted at marriage, then Nathan measured up as a prince of h
usbands.

  Katie leaned down to take Tia’s trash basket.

  Tia put her hand on the rim and held it in place. “What are you doing?”

  “Straightening. Devin won’t be in for three days.”

  Jamaica Plain Senior Advocate Center could afford a janitor only once a week. Tia kept hold of the pail as Katie pulled at it. “I’ll empty my own basket,” Tia said.

  “Fine,” Katie said. “Just don’t forget that today is Dumpster day.”

  Imagining banana peels and apple cores falling on Honor’s face panicked Tia. She reached into the pail and pulled out the photo, drying unseen moisture by pressing it to her shirt.

  “What are you doing?” Katie drew back as though Tia were swinging bits of bacteria her way.

  “It’s bad juju, tossing away a child’s picture. Didn’t you know that?”

  • • •

  Eight hours later, Tia climbed the bus steps. Darkness draped her mood, though nothing had gone wrong. In fact, it had been a day of reaping benefits from the previous month, when she’d walked door to door asking local business owners to donate small treats and trips for her clients. Lately, she’d put “happiness” on her clients goal sheets—just plain-vanilla happiness, even if it were only for an afternoon. At noon that day, she’d taken clients to Bella Luna for lunch: four women, plus Tia, sharing two pizzas and six desserts as they sat under the three-dimensional stars decorating the restaurant.

  Tia jerked backward as the bus lurched forward. She faced a row of construction workers, their roughened hands clutching lunch bags, thermoses, and work gloves. She ran her hand over the latest mystery she was reading to chase away thoughts. She’d put Honor’s picture in the middle of the library book in a vain attempt to press out the crumples she’d caused by stupidly tossing it in the trash. As she stroked the book, a proper repentant action took form. Tia would finally put all the pictures in an album. Now, tonight, she’d start preparing for the visit she expected on Honor’s eighteenth birthday.