Beautiful Lies

and letting me know, instead of running to the landlord.”

Everything on him seemed to fit together perfectly into one tight, lean line. But there was meat to him, not bulk, a kind of supple strength. I could see the detail of a tattoo snaking out from his right shirtsleeve.

“You have the wrong door,” I said, trying not to smile in anticipation of his embarrassment. “I didn’t call the landlord.”

He let the information hang between us for a second and then said the only thing that was appropriate. “Oh.” Awkward silence and a shifting of weight from one leg to the other. “Sorry.”

“No problem,” I answered, and shut the door.

He was hot. But I was distracted by the mail I’d received. Logical Ridley could see clearly that this could be the bizarre antic of a twisted mind. But there was another Ridley, a little scared, a little anxious, thinking, There are too many questions. Check it out.

I watched him walk away through the peephole. I leaned against the wall across from the door and zoned for a minute. Everything around me seemed weightless and I felt a lightness in my head and my stomach. I couldn’t have told you why, maybe it was a mild kind of shock. I’m not sure how long I stood there.

Eventually I returned to the couch and picked up the photos and note again. The interruption had kept me from calling my dad, and now it didn’t seem as urgent as it had a minute earlier. I put the pictures and note back on the table and lay on the plush couch that was too big for the room but that I loved because it was as comfortable as an embrace. A surprising hot, wet sadness overcame me. I cried hard but tried not to sob. The walls and doors were thin and I didn’t want anyone to hear, especially the yummy tattoo man from upstairs.

five

It’s a little-known fact, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make problems disappear. But of course, they can only do this as long as you’re a child. When you’ve become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they’re not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that’s why so many of us take our time growing up.

After a restless night and a seriously unproductive Wednesday where my major accomplishments included doing a load of laundry at the Laundromat downstairs and making a tuna fish sandwich, I left my apartment and headed to the PATH station at Christopher Street. Every Wednesday since I’d come to college in the city, I’ve taken the train home for dinner with my parents. I’d often go home on the weekends, too, but Wednesday had just become this thing that we had. Esme and Zack often joined us, but not since the breakup. And I felt bad about that. But a part of me was guiltily glad, too. I liked having my parents to myself.

“Ridley, how are you doing, hon?” Esme had asked earlier that day over the phone. We still talked relatively often, which was nice. She’d been the nurse in my father’s various offices for longer than I’d been alive. She was more like an adored aunt and a close friend than someone who worked for my dad and the mother of my boyfriend. In fact, I’d been almost more concerned about losing my relationship with her than anything else when I ended it with Zack.

“Zack said you seemed a little stressed,” she said in a near whisper, as though she were talking about some kind of embarrassing feminine problem. “He’s worried about you.”

I knew this was well meaning. But I didn’t think I had seemed stressed during my dinner with Zack. Isn’t it weird when someone tells you something about yourself that’s not true? They’re utterly certain of their assumption, and the more you try to convince them otherwise, the more they seem to dig their heels in.

“No, Ez,” I said, trying to sound light. “I’m fine.”

“Really,” she said, as if she were talking to a mental patient. “Good. I’m glad he was wrong.” She didn’t believe me and was letting me off the hook. Then I started thinking, Maybe I am really stressed, and the only one who can’t see it is me.

This is something I really hate about myself. I am influenced by people’s erroneous assumptions about me. Maybe you know what I mean. During my conversation with Esme, I started to feel really stressed out. Another thing I hated was the idea that people were talking about me, deciding how stressed out I was, feeling sorry for me and then telling me about it. It seems very controlling and manipulative. As if they want me to seem weak and frayed so that they can feel strong and together, superior to poor Ridley, who’s under so much stress.

We chitchatted for a while about my latest article, her worsening rheumatoid arthritis, gift ideas for my mother’s approaching birthday. Maybe it was just my guilt, but I still felt, six months after the fact, that we were tiptoeing around the fact that I had broken her son’s heart and laid waste to everyone’s dreams of a wedding and grandchildren.

In Hoboken, I got on another train and took the half-hour ride to the town where I grew up. It was about a fifteen-minute walk from the train station to my parents’ house. Built in 1919, but gutted and made completely modern in the late eighties, it sat nestled among giant oak and elm trees, an absolute bastion of Americana. It was one of those towns. You know. So precious with its general store and original gas lamps, winding tree-lined streets, pretty houses nestled on perfectly manicured lawns, a virtual picture postcard, especially in the fall and at Christmastime. It was about four o’clock when I walked through the front door. I could smell meat loaf.

“Mom,” I called, letting the screen door slam behind me.

“Oh, Ridley,” said my mother, emerging from the kitchen with a smile. “How are you, dear?”

She embraced me lightly, then pushed me back the length of her arms and scrutinized me for any sign of trouble: circles under my eyes, a breakout on my chin, weight gain or loss, who knows.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, with a narrowing of the eyes.

That was generally one of the first questions my mother asked me when I called, or when I came home. As if I didn’t see them all the time. I call my father nearly every day at his office, but to be fair, I talk to my mother more rarely.

“No,” I said, hugging her. “Of course not.” She nodded but gave me that look that reminded me that she knew me better than I knew myself and that lying was futile. Did everyone want something to be wrong with me?

She felt so small to me. Where she was bony and angular through the arms and shoulders, I was muscular and round. Where she was boyish through the hips and chest, I was full. Where the features of her face were small, delicate, fair, mine were softer, slightly rounder. I looked into her face and suddenly thought of the woman in the picture I’d received last night. My mother looked nothing like me; that stranger was my image.

“What is it, Ridley?” she asked, putting her head to the side and inspecting me with her ice-blue eyes.

“When’s Dad coming home?” I answered, walking away from her into the kitchen and opening the oven door. A meat loaf sizzled happily in tomato sauce and the heat warmed my cheeks. I was glad for a reason to look away from my mother.

“Any minute,” she said. When I didn’t say anything else, she changed the subject. “So, have you leaped into traffic to save a toddler, rushed into any burning buildings…anything exciting like that?”

“Nope. Just that one kid.”

“Good. You probably shouldn’t make a habit out of it. Your luck might run out,” she said, giving me an affectionate pat on the ass.

I sat at the kitchen table and she chatted on about her volunteer work at the local elementary school, Dad’s practice and his work at the clinic for underprivileged kids where he donated his time. I didn’t hear a word my mother was saying, not that I wasn’t interested. I was just eager for the sound of my father’s car in the driveway.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Of course, Mom.”

“What did I just say?”

“If it isn’t my little heartbreaker,” boomed my father as he came in through the back door. He’d taken to calling me that after the breakup.