Miracle Creek(72)
Matt said, “Why did you never tell me? A whole year, and not a fucking word? What were you thinking?”
Janine’s face changed then. The defensiveness zapped away, instantly replaced by a look so different, she seemed to be another person altogether. Like a bull about to charge, chin down and pupils contracted, all the pent-up indignation in her body boiled down to two pinpoints ready to fire. “You’re lecturing me? Seriously? What about your cigarettes, the matches, the fucking note you wrote to a teenage girl? I didn’t see you coming to me, baring your soul. Who’s the one keeping incriminating secrets here?”
Janine’s words were like icicles, puncturing the alcohol-infused warmth blanketing him. She was right, of course. Who was he to be self-righteous? He was the one who’d started it all—the hiding, lies, secrets. He felt every muscle deflate and slump, from his brow down to his calves. “You’re right,” he said. “I should’ve told you. Long ago.”
His quasi-apology seemed to drain Janine’s anger, the furrows in her brow softening at the edges. “So tell me. Everything.”
It was funny, how he’d been dreading this moment when he’d have to tell her about Mary, and yet, now that it was here, he felt more relieved than anything else. He started with the truth, with being stressed about the whole fertility thing and buying cigarettes on a whim, probably as a sabotage effort. It hurt his position in the argument—in the whole marriage, really—to admit this, but that was the thing about lying: you had to throw in occasional kernels of shameful truths to serve as decoys for the things you really needed to hide. How easy it was, to anchor his lies with these fragments of vulnerable honesty, then twist the details to build a believable story. He said Mary found him smoking by the creek and he let her bum cigarettes even though she was too young (true), that he felt guilty (true, though not about the smoking) and resolved not to do it again (not true), but then she asked him to buy more cigarettes for her and her friends (not true), and she started sending him notes asking to meet her (true) to bring cigarettes (not true), and he ignored all her notes (not true), must have been ten at least (true), until he finally decided that all this had to end (true, although again, not because of the smoking) and sent her that final note saying it had to end and to meet him at 8:15 that night (true).
When Janine said, “So, the cigarettes I found, those are what you bought that first day?” Matt said yes, yes, of course, he bought just one pack (not true) and—the most and least truthful thing he said—“Anyway, it was just once.” (True that “it” happened only once, a horrifying, humiliating once on Mary’s birthday that started when she stumbled on top of him. Not true with respect to smoking.)
For a full minute after he finished his story, Janine said nothing. She sat across the table and looked at him without a word, as if trying to read something in his face. He looked back, maintaining eye contact as if daring her not to believe him. Finally, she looked away, then said, “That night before the explosion, when I found her note, why didn’t you tell me then?”
“You know her. We’re friends with her parents, and you might’ve felt obligated to tell them, and it didn’t seem like that big a deal. Annoying, but…” He shrugged. “How’d you find out? That it wasn’t an intern, I mean.”
“The next day,” Janine said, “I was walking by your car in the hospital lot, and I saw a note on the seat about meeting at 8:15.” That was bullshit. No way he’d left that note out in the open. He’d bet anything she spent that whole morning combing through his pockets, e-mails, even trash.
“Given that HBOT ends after 8:00,” she continued, “I figured there’s not many people you could be meeting. Certainly not a hospital intern. So I went through the car and found another one saying something about SAT words. That made it pretty clear who it was.”
He remembered that note. Mary always left her notes under the wipers, but it was raining, so she’d used the spare key in the magnetic holder under his car and taped the note to the steering wheel. She’d drawn a smiley face, and he’d laughed at her youth, the innocence.
“So why didn’t you come talk to me about it?” Matt said this gently, careful to make it sound like a question of curiosity, not an accusation.
“I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t sure what it was all about, so I went out there to see. But the dive was delayed, and she was alone, so I just…” Janine looked at her hands, using a fingertip to trace the lines on her other hand like a fortune-teller. “How did you find out?”
“I went to talk to her, last night. Abe said something about her testifying, and I hadn’t talked to her in a year, so I figured I should find out what she’s gonna say, you know?”
Janine nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly, and he thought he saw a sliver of relief when he said he hadn’t talked to Mary all this time. “I thought she didn’t remember anything,” Janine said. “That’s what Young said.”
“Maybe not the explosion. But she definitely remembers your”—Matt searched for the right word—“visit that night. She only said something to me about it because she assumed you already told me.” Matt swallowed the next words that were dying to come up his throat, the why-the-hell-didn’t-you-tell-me. He’d learned early on—fights in a marriage were like seesaws. You needed to balance blame carefully. You pile too much blame on one person, let them thunk down to the ground, they’re liable to stand and walk away, send you flying down on your ass.