CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR
Tuesday, December 18
How dare you deceive me, Jessica?
At 8:07 P.M. tonight, you call to report that Thomas has just telephoned you.
“Did you make plans for a date?” you are asked.
“No, no, no,” you immediately say.
Those extraneous “no’s” are your undoing: Liars, like the chronically insecure, often overcompensate.
“He told me he couldn’t meet this week after all, but that he’d be in touch,” you continue.
Your voice sounds assured, and also hurried. You are trying to send a signal implying that you are too busy for a sustained conversation.
How naive you are, Jessica, to think that you could ever dictate the terms of our conversation. Or anything else, for that matter.
A lengthy pause is needed to remind you of this, even though this is not a lesson you should require.
“Did he imply that it was simply a function of his busy schedule?” you are asked. “Did you get the impression he would follow up again?”
Under this questioning, you make your second error.
“He really didn’t give a reason,” you reply. “That’s all his text said.”
It it possible you simply misspoke when you described the method of communication first as a phone call and then as a text?
Or was this a deliberate deception?
If you were within the confines of the therapy office, perched on the love seat, your nonverbal clues might emerge: a twirl of your hair, the fiddling of your stacked silver rings, or the scraping of one fingernail along another.
Over the telephone, however, your subtle tells are not apparent.
Your inconsistencies could be called out.
But if you are being duplicitous, such scrutiny might have the effect of causing you to more carefully cover your tracks.
And so you are allowed to exit the conversation.
What do you do when you hang up the phone?
Perhaps you continue your usual nightly routine, smug in the knowledge that you’ve evaded a potentially treacherous conversation. You walk your dog, then take a long shower and comb conditioner through your unruly curls. While you restock your beauty case, you dutifully call your parents. After you hang up, you hear the familiar noises through the thin walls of your apartment: footsteps overhead, the muted sound of a television sitcom, the honking of taxis on the street outside.
Or has the tenor of your evening shifted?
Perhaps the noises are not comforting tonight. The long, anemic wail of a police car. A heated argument in the apartment next door. The scrabble of mice in the baseboards. You may be thinking of the unreliable lock on your building’s front door. It’s so easy for a stranger, or even an acquaintance, to slip in.
You are intimately known to me, Jessica. You have consistently proved your devotion: You wore the burgundy nail polish. You quashed your instinctual hesitations and followed instructions. You didn’t surreptitiously glimpse the sculpture before you delivered it. You surrendered your secrets.
But in the past forty-eight hours, you have begun to slip away: You did not prioritize our most recent meeting, instead leaving early to attend to a client. You evaded my calls and texts. You clearly lied to me. You are acting as though this relationship is merely transactional, as though you regard it as a well-stocked ATM that dispenses cash without consequences.
What has changed, Jessica?
Have you felt the heat of Thomas’s flame?
That possibility causes a fierce rigidity in the body.
It takes several minutes of slow, sustained breathing to recover.
Focus is returned to the issue at hand: What will it cost to buy your loyalty back?
Your file is brought from the study upstairs into the library and set down on the coffee table. Across from it, Thomas’s paper-white narcissi rest atop the piano, near the photograph of us on our wedding day. A subtle fragrance perfumes the air.
The file is opened. The first page contains the photocopied driver’s license you provided on the day you joined the study, as well as other biographical data.
The second page consists of printed photographs Ben was asked to gather from Instagram.
You and your sister look like siblings, but whereas your features are finely drawn and your eyes sharp, Becky’s still hold on to the softness of childhood, as if a smear of Vaseline has coated the portion of the camera’s lens that focused on her.
Caring for Becky can’t be easy.
Your mother wears a cheap-looking blouse and she squints into the sunlight; your father rests his hands in his pockets as though they can help support him to remain upright.
Your parents look tired, Jessica.
Perhaps a vacation is in order.