Beautiful Lies (32 page)

In the past nine years, I’ve only taken the Forest Hills exit three times. The first time was less than two years ago, right after my sister and I got our drivers’ licenses. We never discussed where we were going that day; we both knew without having to say it out loud.

Our old house was really more of a cottage, a single story built on a few wooded acres, our yard basically part of the forest. You had to know where you were going in order to find the place. It was on a dead-end gravel road in the middle of nowhere; our closest neighbor growing up was a fifteen-minute walk away, a tiny run-down A-frame occupied by an elderly guy named Ed Shandy. Rachel and I used to visit him sometimes when we went for walks without our mom or dad. Ed kept a refrigerator in his basement stocked with Red Chief cherry soda. As far as we could tell, it was the only
thing he ever drank. Our mom never bought soda, so it was a treat we looked forward to with ridiculous anticipation every time we went to see Ed. Rachel only ever drank one, sometimes two, but I couldn’t get enough of it. I was maybe seven or eight, already hard-wired with an appetite for excess. One time I drank so much soda that I ended up puking on the walk home.

I was the one driving the day Rachel and I visited our old house. “Don’t park,” she instructed, once we were almost there. “Just slow down while you drive past.”

But I couldn’t help it; I had to stop. I hadn’t come this far just to get a glimpse. I pulled to the side of the road and shut off the engine.

“It looks so much smaller than I remember,” I said. “Was it always this tiny?”

Rachel flattened her hands against the passenger side window, like it was a barrier that could not possibly be breached, and peered at the house. “
We
were smaller. Of course it seemed bigger at the time.” She leaned back in her seat. “I’m ready to go.”

“Are you kidding? I don’t think anybody’s home. Come on, let’s get out. We can look in the windows.”

“No.” She grabbed my arm. “I want to leave now.”

But once I’d voiced the idea, I couldn’t let it go. “I’ll only be a few minutes,” I said, wriggling free of her grasp as I climbed out of the car.

“Alice, come back.” She was pleading with me, her eyes
wide with panic, like I might disappear onto the property and never return. I felt a rare twinge of annoyance. This was her home too. How could she not want to peek inside, to compare the way it looked now to the fossilized version in our minds? To me, the house served as proof that we’d existed as a normal family once.
We slept in this room. We ate in this room. We played in these woods. We were here. It was real.
My aunt and uncle have never made much of an effort to preserve the memory of our parents. Maybe they think it will be too painful for us. What’s more painful, I think, is trying to ignore the past, to pretend it never happened.

Another family had moved in. A new wooden playset—the fancy, expensive kind—had been installed in the backyard. A neat rectangle of land had been cleared to make room for a tidy vegetable garden, the plants arranged in symmetrical rows, the whole thing surrounded by low wire fencing to keep out small animals. A newish central A/C unit hummed away beneath the living-room window. My parents used to claim they didn’t believe in air conditioning—they said it was better to just wear fewer clothes and keep the windows open—but now I wondered if they only said that because it was a luxury they never could have afforded.

I took my time circling the house, looking into every window. The roof had been replaced, three skylights installed where there used to be nothing but rotting shingles, the glass squares spilling light into the formerly dim foyer. The sliding glass doors leading to the side patio were
now french doors. The kitchen was almost unrecognizable: ceramic tile instead of linoleum, granite countertops instead of chipped laminate. It was the same thing in the bathroom; everything was new and clean and beautiful. There were no wet towels on the floor beside the shower, no toiletries cluttering the sink, no visible ring around the tub (which my mother used to swear was impossible to get rid of). I don’t know why whoever lived there even bothered to leave the house standing; they’d changed so much they might as well have torn down the place and started from scratch. Somehow, I think I would have preferred that. The way things were, it was like the new owners wanted to destroy all traces of us, to lift away every impression we’d ever made and replace it with something newer, something
better,
like the remnants we’d left behind weren’t good enough. I had no idea who these people were, but I knew I disliked them, even as I understood how irrational the feeling was. They’d bought the house. They had every right to do whatever they pleased to it.

I only looked around for five or ten minutes before returning to the car. “They changed everything,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to see for yourself?”

“I’m sure.” She folded her legs, pulling her knees against her chest, and turned the radio up so loud that it was impossible to hold a conversation. As we drove away, I slowed down when we passed the spot where Ed Shandy’s A-frame used to sit, but it was gone. In its place, someone had built a
two-story Colonial with ugly beige siding. They’d cut down all the trees and installed an in-ground swimming pool.

I turned off the radio. “I wonder what happened to Ed? It seems strange that he would move away, don’t you think?”

My sister looked at me sharply. “He was ancient, Alice. I’m sure he’s dead by now.”

For some reason, the possibility hadn’t crossed my mind. In the months after the accident, I used to imagine Ed sitting in his house, watching game shows on his old TV with its crooked wire antenna, an overflowing supply of Red Chief cherry soda waiting for us in his basement. I used to think that, no matter how long we were gone, Ed would always be there when we finally returned. For a while, I used to ask my aunt to buy us cherry soda when she went grocery shopping. She was happy to oblige me, but it never seemed to taste the same; the syrupy flavor seemed artificial (which I’m sure it was) and overwhelming; I felt sick after just a few sips.

When we got home that day, I felt sorry that I’d forced my sister to wait while I snooped around outside our old house. But she had wanted to go as much as I did—at least I’d assumed she had. “I thought you wanted to go,” I told her. “Didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer me.

“Don’t be mad at me because you were too afraid to leave the car,” I said. The words came out harsher than I’d intended.

“I’m not mad. And I wasn’t afraid.” She glanced at our front porch, where Charlie was sitting with Sean Morelli,
helping him brush Sheba. She was shedding like crazy; wisps of loose fur drifted through the air as they worked, floating away in the breeze like miniature tumbleweeds.

“Then what’s the matter? Why are you ignoring me?”

She held very still as she spoke. “I thought being there would feel different. I thought I’d be sad, or angry, or … something.”

“But you weren’t?” Charlie and Sean were watching, waiting for us to get out of the car.

“No.”

“Well, then, what
did
you feel?”

Rachel didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. “I didn’t feel anything. All I could think about was that we didn’t belong there, that we were trespassing. None of it is ours anymore, Alice. Do you know what I mean?”

“We used to live there,” I insisted. “We had every right to look around.”

“You’re wrong.” She seemed certain of the fact.

“I’m not wrong. That place was a part of our lives.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was part of a different life. Not the one we have now.” She got out of the car and started toward the house. When she reached the porch, she sat down on the swing and slipped into conversation with Charlie and Sean, the three of them laughing about something while I stayed in the car, trying to wrap my head around the idea that a person could simply wipe away the past and start all over again. We hadn’t had much of a choice, true, but Rachel
seemed to have let go without a struggle. It wasn’t nearly as easy for me; I was leaving claw marks, resisting with all my strength, desperate to combine all those memories into something that felt whole. It wasn’t working.

Robin and I are parked in front of my old house now, at almost two thirty in the morning, my headlights switched off so we won’t look too suspicious, even though it’s unlikely anyone will notice us this late at night.

“Rachel never came back after that,” I explain. “Not that I ever invited her.”

“But you did come back,” he says. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes. I came back twice by myself. The second time was just like the first. Nobody was home. I looked around for a while, and then I left. It was no big deal.”

He rolls down his window to toss out his cigarette. “And what happened the third time?”

“I saw them. I saw the people who live here now.” I try to swallow, but it’s difficult; I’m still so thirsty that I can barely stand it.

“I drove up just as they were leaving,” I continue. “I watched them get into their car, the mom and dad and their daughter.”

“Did they notice you?”

“Yes. I pretended I was pulled over to make a phone call. They didn’t pay much attention.”

He lights another cigarette. “That’s because you look so innocent.” He grins. “But I know better.”

I know he’s trying to be flirtatious, that his comment was innocent, but I’m not in the mood for flirtation right now—not when he’s just told me he’s leaving soon. “They looked normal,” I say, trying to pretend his words have no effect on me. “They seemed happy. They drove away, and I waited for a few minutes before I got out of the car, and then I did the same thing I’d done the other times.”

“You looked in the windows?”

“Yeah.” I pause.

“What?” Robin asks, sensing my hesitation. “What else did you do?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly, which is a lie, and he knows it.

“Tell me.” When I turn my face toward him, he cups my chin in his hand. “You can trust me, Alice. Don’t you know that?”

But I don’t trust him, not like I used to. He just told me he’s leaving. He doesn’t care that I’ll be alone. He’s looking out for himself.

I tell him anyway. “I threw a rock through the french doors. The glass shattered everywhere.”

He exhales a ribbon of smoke, staring as it dissipates in front of us. “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know.” That’s not true, either; I’d done it because I wanted to hurt them, the new owners with their perfect, happy life and their renovated house filled with expensive things.

“I went inside, Robin.”

The whites of his eyes flash as his gaze widens. “Jesus, Alice. Did you steal anything?”

“No.” The question seems ridiculous. Why would I want something of theirs? “All I wanted was to see my dad’s mural. Before the accident, my dad was working on a mural in the living room. It took up a whole wall. He never got to finish it.”

Robin crinkles his forehead in surprise. “And it was still there? They didn’t paint over it?”

“Oh, sure,” I say, “they repainted the whole room. It’s sort of a beige color now. It’s boring.”

“Alice, you’re not making sense. If they painted over the mural, then how could you see it?”

I close my eyes. I remember standing in the living room, shattered glass surrounding my feet, staring at the blank wall, trying to remember what the mural had looked like. And then it just … appeared. It seemed to emerge from beneath the new layers of paint, the lines bleeding through gradually at first, and then all of a sudden, until I could see every last detail. It was as clear as anything, every bit as real to me as Robin is right now, sitting beside me in the car.

And then it was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared. It simply dissolved, the colors bleeding together until there was nothing left. But it was real. I’d seen it and touched it, and I knew that it would always be there, no matter how many new layers of paint were applied. As long as the house
was standing, the new owners could do whatever they wanted to make it their own, but the mural would remain. To me, it was proof: we were here once. Nothing could change that.