Count My Lies

Chapter 2

2

Mom?” I call out when I get home from work, easing the front door shut behind me and setting my keys on the little table in the entryway. “I’m home!”

“Sloanie? Is that you?” That’s my real name, Sloane. Sloanie, Sloanie, full of baloney. And yes, I live at home with my mother. I know, I know, another notch on my belt of accomplishments. I’m working on it. Really, that’s the truth. Hand to heart.

“Yeah, it’s me, Mom,” I answer loudly. I kick off my shoes, drop my purse next to them, and walk down the short hallway into the living room. She’s in her recliner with the TV on, wearing a light blue tracksuit and thick wool socks like a character from a seventies sitcom. I cross the room and bend over to drop a kiss on her cheek, glancing at the screen. Murder, She Wrote , her favorite old show. She’s likely seen this episode at least three times before.

“How was work?” she asks, lowering the volume from blasting to blaring. She squints up at me, looking far older than her age, her short, wiry hair almost all gray, the lines across her forehead, around her eyes and mouth, deep.

“Fine,” I say, shrugging. “I’m going to get dinner started. You hungry?”

She nods and points the remote back at the TV, the sound returning to an assaulting level. I’m surprised the neighbors don’t complain.

Both my mother’s eyesight and hearing are declining. Years of working on her feet as a house cleaner have ruined her back, leaving her hunched and aching, her joints stiff. She’s had rheumatoid arthritis since her thirties, managed by medication, but it’s taken its toll, finally rendering her unable to move most days, let alone work.

She spends her days in a well-worn corduroy armchair in the corner of the living room, a heating pad on her backside, legs stretched out before her, peering through smudged glasses at the TV as reruns of Unsolved Mysteries and Forensic Files degrade the screen. She drinks cup after cup of oversweetened, lukewarm coffee, followed by one whiskey at five, then another cup of coffee before bed, this time, decaf. It wasn’t my plan to be living with my mother in my thirties, but at least I can keep an eye on her. By now, taking care of her is second nature, something I’ve done for as long as I can remember.

I head into the kitchen and open the fridge. There’s some leftover roast chicken from the dinner I made last night that I warm up and shred into a bowl, along with a handful of chopped-up cucumbers and carrots, some romaine lettuce. A modest attempt to counterbalance the Chinese takeout my mother frequently has delivered for lunch. I divvy the salad between my plate and my mom’s, then head back into the living room.

“Thanks, Sloanie,” my mom says, taking the plate from me. Then she mutes her show. She likes to hear about my day when we eat.

“I did Dolly’s nails today,” I say, biting into a carrot.

I’ve been working at the day spa—Rose her clients were generous, Lena told me, alluding to the deep pockets in Cobble Hill. It was slightly less than I made in my last position, even with the tip money, but as they say, beggars can’t be choosers.

I accepted the job on the spot, handing over a forged cosmetology license that I’d Venmoed some guy online fifty bucks for. Lena glanced at it, distracted by a ringing phone, then told me I could start the following day.

It’s a good job, mindless, easy, and most of the clients leave at least twenty percent, sometimes thirty, at the end of their service. Between that and the social security checks my mom collects, we have enough for our rent, our bills, but it’s not nearly enough to keep me from wishing for something better—something more —or from dreading the sound of my alarm clock each morning, its blaring chimes grating.

“And how is she?” my mother asks, referring to Dolly—as in Parton. An homage to the Queen of Country herself. I make up names for my regulars, the ones I see week after week, women I’ve come to know through their too-loud phone conversations or idle chitchat. Dolly Parton is really Laura Hoffman, but they share the same big blonde hair and oversized chest. Laura even has a slight Southern twang, although she grew up in Texas, not Tennessee like Dolly. She’s a Dallas transplant, having moved to New York after she met her husband while he was on an oil expedition—or whatever tycoons do when they travel for business.

“Her stepdaughter wants the Lamborghini,” I say. Laura’s husband—very old and very wealthy—died two years ago. She’s been in litigation with his children since, fighting over every last cent the old coot had to his name. Which was quite a bit. Laura updates me on the developments when she comes in every week. She lives in a penthouse in Manhattan—on the Upper East Side, where else—but she has a son from a previous marriage in Brooklyn Heights, a few streets over from Rose we’d only driven an hour north, not even crossing state lines, just one county to the next. By the grace of god, the teacher hadn’t asked me to the front of the class that morning, hadn’t mentioned me at all. I was a blank canvas, a tabula rasa.

As I watched the girls’ faces light up, something inside of me swelled. I knew I’d said the right thing. The girl with the bracelets beamed at me. “Are you famous?” she asked excitedly.

I shook my head no, but when I saw her disappointment, I quickly added, “But my dad is. He’s in the movies.”

Their gasps were audible. And just like that, I was special. It was so easy.

That day, so unlike all my previous first days, everyone fought to sit next to me at lunch. I told them about the beach and the palm trees, describing in detail what it was like to wade into the breaking waves, the colors of the seashells I found on the shore. One summer, I’d won a sandcastle-building contest, I said. Of course, I’d never seen the Pacific. I’d been to Daytona a few times, which aided in my descriptions, along with scenes from my favorite Disney movie, Lilo and Stitch , and my second-favorite movie, Flipper . After lunch we played handball, and the girl with the bracelets—her name was Bianca—asked me to be on her team. I was elated.

When they asked to meet my dad, I told them he was on set, filming a new movie. It could be true, I reasoned with myself. It’s why the lies never seemed so bad. I had no idea where he was or what he did. How did I know he wasn’t an actor?

I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted so desperately for people to like me, and it was the only way I could think of. It was no more complicated than that: I wished I was more interesting, so I pretended to be. Sloanie, Sloanie, the big fat phony.

But the irony is that the more elaborate my lies became, the further I had to keep people away. I could never invite anyone over. They’d want to know where my puppy was, the one I said we’d adopted over the summer. His name was Pickles, I told my classmates, and he was the runt of the litter, black with white spots. They’d want to see the princess bed I’d described, the one with the sparkly canopy and unicorn sheets. They’d want to meet my dad, the movie star, and swim in our backyard pool with the waterslide. Of course they did. It was why we were friends. And it was also why we could never be friends. Not real ones, at least.

Then, another lie occurred to me, one that would solve all my problems. I came to class one Monday with a long face and whispered into Bianca’s ear that there’d been a fire at our house over the weekend. Everything had been lapped up in the flames, our home with the backyard pool burned to the ground. My canopy bed was gone. So was our dog.

I told her we had to move into an apartment across town, but that it was only temporary, until they rebuilt our house. Maybe she wanted to come over after school one day? The apartment wasn’t as nice as our house, I said, but there was a park across the street we could go to, and I’d saved some of my Barbies before I ran out. Bianca nodded, wide-eyed.

By recess, everyone had heard. My teacher, Miss Newberry, pulled me aside at lunch and asked me what happened. I repeated the story I told Bianca, about how my mom had left the stove on, the fire alarm sounding in the middle of the night. She touched my arm, her eyes soft and sympathetic, and told me if there was anything I needed to let her know. And that I didn’t have to turn in any homework assignments that week. I was pleased as punch.

The next day, Miss Newberry announced to the class that the school would be hosting a fundraiser for me and my family, to help us during this difficult time. It would be a bake sale, and she would be sending a sign-up sheet home for everyone’s parents. I smiled shyly, overjoyed by the special attention. But, unsurprisingly, the fundraising never happened. One of my classmates’ moms called mine that night, asking for our new address to organize a meal train for us. I was coloring on the floor of our living room when I heard my mom say, “What fire?” into the receiver, and I knew I was toast.

That Thursday, I sat with my mother in front of the principal, my legs dangling over the chair as he droned on, lecturing me about the consequences of the lie. My mother was mortified, to say the very least.

I was embarrassed, too. Mostly because I’d gotten caught. If I had the chance to go back, I would have done it again. It was worth it for the way everyone looked at me those two days.

I was too young for detention, so the principal made me write an apology letter to my classmates and Miss Newberry. My mother took away my television privileges for a month. But neither punishment taught me not to lie. It taught me to be a better liar. I didn’t make the same mistakes at my next school.

We moved again at the end of the year. In sixth grade, I told one of my classmates that I rode horses on the weekends, after I finished reading Black Beauty . She did, too, she exclaimed happily, then invited me to her riding club the following weekend. I made up excuse after excuse about why I could never go. Trips to my fictional aunt and uncle’s house in the mountains, dance classes, sleepovers with friends from my old school. All of which meant I had to stay home, alone in the apartment, while my mother worked, instead of with the friends I’d made because of the stories I’d told. I’d stop by the library on Friday afternoons to stock up on the books I spent the weekends reading. Books that kept the loneliness at bay, whose details wove themselves into the web of lies I spun.

I lied through middle school and high school, then through community college and beyond. Small lies, usually, but lies, nonetheless. I should have stopped by now—I’m an adult, for god’s sake—but I haven’t. I can’t. I just want so badly to say the right thing, be the right kind of person, that when I open my mouth, out comes what I think someone wants to hear, whether it’s true or not.

It’s not that there haven’t been any consequences—aside from visits to the principal’s office. I’ve lost friends here and there, job opportunities when my references were checked a little too thoroughly. I’m a good liar, but I’ll have slip ups, or someone else will refute my story, and I’ll be exposed.

Sometimes, there are stretches of time that I lie less. Usually after I’ve been caught. I try to change, try to be honest, but after a few weeks, I hear myself saying something that isn’t true, something I hadn’t even planned on lying about, and I slip right back into my old ways like I would into my favorite shirt. It fits, just right. Snug, comfortable, well-worn. Other times, when things are going well, like when I had the job before this one, I don’t feel the need as often. I still do it, unable to help myself, but the urge isn’t as strong.

But here’s the part that makes me an even bigger freak. Sometimes I believe my own lies. They feel real. I get swept up in the fantasy, the telling of it, the retelling, lying in bed at night adding to the story, drifting off and dreaming about it. I think it’s because I’ve always felt like there had to be more to my life than what it was. I couldn’t just be this poor kid with no dad. He had to be out there. He had to be special , which meant I had to be special, too. Doesn’t everyone want to feel special?

“So, a good day,” my mom says. Both a question and a statement. Right, the hundred-dollar tip.

“Mm-hm,” I answer. It was a good day. A very good day. I consider telling her about Jay and Harper, but I don’t. I’m not quite sure why. She’s the one person I don’t lie to, the only person who thinks I’m interesting, just as I am.

Even so, I want to keep them to myself, for now. And leaving something out isn’t the same as lying, not quite. It’s what I tell myself, anyway.

My mom hands me the remote. “You pick the movie,” she says. “I picked the last one.”

I give it back. “No, you choose. I’ll get dessert. We still have that pint of Rocky Road.”

“I’ll take two scoops.” My mom settles back into her armchair as she starts scrolling through the list of trending titles on Netflix. We watched a thriller last night, one about a woman whose husband isn’t as perfect as he seems. Few husbands are, at least in Hollywood, apparently.

In the kitchen, I load our dishes into the dishwasher and dole out what’s left of the carton into two bowls, tossing the empty container into the almost-full recycle bin. I make a mental note to take it out before the collectors come on Monday. I dim the lights on my way back to the couch, handing my mom her bowl before taking a seat. The title sequence of a movie—another thriller—begins to play, cheesy music rising, and I take a bite of my ice cream, turning the cold spoon over in my mouth.

Almost immediately, I tune out, the screen blurring, sounds fading. All I can think about is Jay and Harper. But mostly Jay. His smile. I wonder if I’ll see him again.

Before I go to bed, I take my paperback copy of And Then There Were None off my bookshelf and put it in my bag. Just in case.