Once A Liar

“Well, I hope so, Juliette. I’d like to be busy with you.” I kissed her knuckles and hoped she would allow me to spend more time with her.

“Would you?” she teased as she leaned in to kiss me.

From that moment forward, we were inseparable. I went to the office most days of the week, but spent my time there planning dates and thinking of ways to impress Juliette. Professionally, I was becoming indifferent to the nature of my cases, the plight of my clients and their accusers, disengaged from the emotional aspects, but with Juliette, I was infatuated.

NOW (#u6589a2b9-2b55-5642-ba4f-7e0824597b39)

Claire has been living in my house for eight years, but I still can’t fully acclimate to cohabitating with another human being with her own will and own needs. The last person I lived with was Juliette, and I got used to my solitude in the interim. Claire didn’t need to move in with me. She had made plenty of money on her own, working for a prestigious interior design firm. She wanted to live with me. Yet I still stumble over her things, crash into her when she stands between me and my destination and I can never remember how she takes her coffee.

When we prepare and dress ourselves for an evening out, we holler between rooms; Claire in her boudoir between the master bedroom and the master bath, and me fixated on my own image in my dressing room mirror. Just as we are doing this evening.

“He’s never been to a benefit with his father,” I remind her, “and you’re constantly saying that I need to develop a relationship with him, so why not let him go in your place? It’s not like you enjoy these things.” I tie and untie my silk bow tie, never satisfied with its position.

Claire is already in a full face of makeup, hair held in place with clips and pins while she tools around with a curling iron. She wears a flesh-colored slimming leotard, intended to smooth out any undesirable bulges even though she has none, unless protruding hip bones and delineated vertebrae are no longer in style.

“It’s his first week with us—he hasn’t even unpacked yet. You think he wants to go to a formal affair?” Claire calls across the rooms.

“Why not? He’d love it, famous faces galore.”

“So, I got all dolled up for nothing?” Claire leans out the door to look at me, probes her hair and pouts.

“I didn’t ask you to put all that on.” I walk into her boudoir and position myself behind her as she leans over the vanity and puts on lipstick, teasing me with her ass in the air.

“You never ask me to put things on,” she coos, smiling at me in the mirror.

I hold her waist with my left hand and lean back to look for a way to remove her leotard. There are no clasps, no zippers or buttons for me to undo, so I slip a finger under the elastic on her hip and slide it between her legs. Bending her down farther with my other hand, I glide her legs apart with my knee and pull the crotch of her leotard to the side. I control her movements while I unzip my tuxedo pants.

I can feel Claire’s eyes on me, but I’m staring only at myself in the reflection. No matter with whom I’m having sex, my mind always slips back to that night Marcus and I went to the strip club. Every girl, every soft, slim body I enter, inevitably turns into the stripper at the club who Marcus defiled. If I don’t look at Claire’s eyes, I can pretend that I’m not completely indifferent, that she is special and loved, but in reality, Claire could have been anyone. She’s disposable. Expendable.

Every time we have sex, I feel as though I turn inhuman. I become a robot; not violent, not hurtful, but mechanical, disconnected. My hips thrust back and forth, and I can see myself in the mirror, but I feel nothing. The physical pleasure I’m supposed to experience is buried underneath the idea that I am controlling another human being. That’s where I get the gratification from; it’s not about connection or intimacy, because I don’t care. I can’t care.

Once I finish, I pull out of her and leave her standing there, red handprints rising on her ass. I tuck myself back into my pants, zip up and return my attention to my bow tie.

“I’ll tell Jamie to get ready,” I say, disregarding the intermission in our conversation. Claire readjusts the crotch of her leotard so she isn’t exposed, pulls a silk robe off its hook and wraps it around herself. I walk out of her boudoir to the bedroom and buzz the intercom in Jamie’s room.

“You busy tonight?” I pause and wait for Jamie’s response.

“Um, no?” He asks me more than tells me. “Just homework, I guess.”

“Good, take a quick shower and get a tux on. We’re going out.”

Claire stands in the doorway and looks on as Jamie tells me he’s grown out of his tuxedo.

“Don’t worry,” I respond, “you can borrow one of mine. We’re probably the same size.”

A peculiar look spreads across Claire’s face as she watches me slip my antique cuff links through my French-cuffed shirt. She’s not quite looking at me, more through me, and I tell Jamie I’ll be waiting for him downstairs in fifteen minutes.

“Claire will bring the tuxedo to your room,” I say before hanging up the phone.

Her inquisitive look turns dark. She pulls the tuxedo from my hand to bring to Jamie, and I can just hear her mutter, “Who am I living with?” under her breath as she leaves the room.

I reach into a drawer and pull out several masks to choose from. Claire and I have attended several masquerade balls and costume parties over the years, and we never seem to throw any of the masks away. I study each one, some feminine, silky and feathered, others simple and sleek. I pull out two and move to the mirror to try them on. I’ve worn one of them before, but the other, the white one, I’ve been saving for a special occasion. The smooth white mask covers the top half of my face, and at the forehead, above the small eyeholes, two large golden horns protrude.

I slip the mask over my head and it settles perfectly on my face. I’m reminded of a minotaur as I look myself over. Before I walk down the stairs to meet Jamie, I say loudly to my reflection, “Yes, Claire, who are you living with?”

THEN (#u6589a2b9-2b55-5642-ba4f-7e0824597b39)

It wasn’t a year from the day we met before we were married. Juliette and I flew down to the Turks and Caicos, just the two of us, knowing exactly what we were planning on doing but telling no one. She had hidden her engagement ring from public view before we got on the plane, but as we looked out over the turquoise water, she slipped it on her finger. We rented a house on the beach and spent a few days relaxing in the sun, completely wrapped up in one another.

I wanted to keep Juliette happy. I was already elated that she’d agreed to elope and I wasn’t forced to attend a wedding where I would inevitably have to discuss my upbringing, and why my family wasn’t in attendance. We lay on a daybed on our porch overlooking the sea, and as if she could read my mind, Juliette started in on a conversation about family.

“Do you think we should call my parents?” She looked up at me while I stroked her hair. “If your parents were alive, I’m sure they would want to be here, don’t you think?”

I was jolted with conflict—I had sold my story to Juliette. The story about my art dealer father, my philanthropist mother and their tragic and untimely deaths. I had told the story so many times since leaving Vermont that it had become true to me. It was only with Juliette that I felt like I was lying, and it gnawed at me. We were about to get married, and if I was planning on spending the rest of my life with her, I felt compelled to tell her the truth.

“Yes, I do think they would want to be here. But...” I paused, concerned that she would be hurt and upset that I had lied, but sure that if such a time existed that would be perfect for a confession, it was right then. “But we’ve gone our separate ways, and I can’t turn back now.” I started my revelation.

“Your separate ways?” she asked, confused but not yet suspicious. “You mean after the car accident?” She turned uneasy.

I sighed deeply, slowly responding, “There was never a car accident. As far as I know, my parents are probably still alive.”

“What?” She quickly sat up and turned to face me, pulling off her sunglasses. “You told me they died in that accident when you were still living in Europe. What do you mean they’re alive?”

“I know.” I hung my head, embarrassed and apprehensive. “I know what I told you. It’s the same thing I tell everyone. But it’s not really what happened.”

“What really happened, Peter?” The anger was rising in her voice.

“Nothing happened, darling.” I tried to hold her, but she leaned just out of reach. “We just went our separate ways.” I couldn’t fully bring myself to tell the truth. I felt terrified of being exposed, bringing my humiliating past to the surface and letting her know that I didn’t belong among her venerated peers.

She didn’t say a word, but her wide eyes and furrowed brow told me to keep talking.

“I didn’t grow up in Europe,” I confessed. “My father wasn’t an art dealer.” I threw my sunglasses on the daybed beside me and rubbed the ache out of my eyes. “I hate where I came from, and I never want to go back there. I started making up stories a long time ago, and I never told anyone the truth after I left.”

She softened slightly, a look of sympathy rising in her eyes. “Where did you grow up?”

My stomach burned with adrenaline. “Vermont. In Burlington. My father took off, and my mother gave up custody when I was an infant. I was raised by my uncle and his wife.” I felt light-headed as I continued, completely unaccustomed to saying these words aloud. “They were dead inside. No drive, no passion. They floated through life and I couldn’t stand it.” I couldn’t look at Juliette as I admitted the truth. I had buried the truth so deeply, bringing it back up made me feel like I was violently heaving. “I was a burden to them. They barely scraped by raising their own four kids—they certainly didn’t want to have to worry about me.”

“I don’t understand. You grew up in the States? Your parents are alive?”

“It’s hard to explain.” I shook my head, frustrated. “My mother... I didn’t know her. She came by once in a while, but she didn’t take responsibility for me. She dumped me with my uncle Tommy and his wife. They were dead, Juliette. I don’t know how to make it clear to you. They were nothing at all, just bodies with no souls, no vitality, no life inside them. They didn’t raise me or teach me or discipline me. I just existed alongside them. They gave me nothing. Not a chance, not an expectation, not a modicum of concern. Nothing.”

She examined my face, looking at me hard, as if she were trying to find a sign I was telling her the truth. “Are they still in Vermont?” she asked, the anger in her voice waning.

“I guess so. I don’t know. I left before college, and I haven’t spoken to them since.”

“And you never had any contact with them? They never tried to find you?”

“No. As far as I know, they were just as happy to be rid of me as I was to be rid of them. My cousins, Tommy’s kids, they always reminded me I wasn’t one of them, and I didn’t belong. I didn’t look like them, I didn’t act like them. I was smart, I wanted to succeed in life. When my eldest cousin, just two years older than me, finished high school, I took off that summer. I was seventeen years old, I had worked after school to earn some money, and when I could afford to get out of there, I got a one-way ticket to Chicago and never looked back.”