The Better Liar(83)

Leslie writhed for a few seconds longer. At last she went limp. I didn’t let go; I wasn’t stupid.

“Okay,” I said. “So now tell me why you decided to erase yourself.”

She stared past me, up at the ceiling. I waited.

“Fine,” I said at last. “I’ll guess. But you won’t like my guess. Here it is: I think you and Mommy had something else in common besides your attractive tendency toward morbidity. It was something you said last night, actually, that helped me put the final piece in place. Do you remember what it was?”

Leslie barely blinked. She looked washed out, frozen.

I leaned in. “You said, She didn’t want us.” I sniffed. “Well, actually what you said was she didn’t want you. But I assumed you were just forgetting about my existence again. It’s so easy for you to do that.”

Leslie’s eyelids fluttered. She’d started to cry, silently, without moving.

“And that revelation came to you not when we were children and she avoided our presence, hated our voices, shut herself in the bathroom over and over—it was after you had your own baby. What’s his name again?”

Leslie’s throat moved as she swallowed. After a minute, she said, “Eli.”

“Eli. That’s right. You and Christine, you got yourselves tangled up so quickly. You met Dave and thought your life was fixed. Except he wanted something from you. He wanted a kid. And you wanted to give him anything he wanted. So you had the baby. And things with Mom were so long ago. You barely remember her. You didn’t think you were much like her at all. But then you had Eli, and…” I waited for her to finish the sentence, but she only cried some more. “You didn’t love him. Am I right?”

    Leslie couldn’t answer me. Snot blocked her nose.

“I bet you felt really guilty. I bet you felt just like Mommy. You tried for a whole year. But you hated being a mother. And so you wanted to quit.”

Leslie squeezed her eyes shut.

“But you can’t just quit motherhood, can you?” I sat back on my heels and ticked off the options on my fingers. “There’s divorce and refusing custody. But then Dave would have hated you, and you couldn’t handle watching your perfect husband see that you were not the perfect wife. Plus, there’s that annoying child support! So, suicide. But then you’d be just like Christine. That’s so embarrassing!” I clutched my cheeks. “And Dave would totally tell on you. Not like Daddy, sweeping it under the rug. He’d ask for support from his family members, like a loony. Then there’s option three—you could smother Eli and blame SIDS.”

Leslie gasped.

“Aw, see, too scared for that. You don’t like to get involved with the police. Unlike me.” I winked. “So you fell on option four. You decided to run away.”

Leslie twisted out from under me. I let her go. She fell against the bookcase, wiping her nose on her cardigan, leaving long runny tracks on the cotton.

“What I don’t get,” I said at last, “is what your plan was this time around. Without Frank, you couldn’t make it look like a real carjacking. What, you were just going to ditch the car and buy a cash plane ticket?”

Leslie shrugged.

I laughed. “Wait, was that really your plan?”

“I don’t know,” she said through cracked lips. “I just thought I’d…get out somehow. Leave.” She coughed. “I put extra money in Eli’s college fund. Before Clery. For when I was gone.”

“You didn’t think Dave would look for you?”

She shook her head. “He’s in love with Elaine. She’s a good mother. He’d have…what he really wanted. And then he wouldn’t know that I…He wouldn’t have to hate me. He wouldn’t have to know that I wanted to go. Because if he knew, he’d want to fix it, and I can’t fix it.” She spread her hands. “I am like her. Like Christine. I shouldn’t have had a baby at all. I should have known there was something wrong with me. If Dave knew, he would have to think about it every—every time he looked at Eli, every time he thought about me. It would make him sick.”

    “He loves you,” I said. “I watched him. I saw. You found the real thing.”

Leslie looked away. There was a long pause. “Did she really kill herself?” she asked finally, staring at the carpet.

“Who? Mom? Of course not,” I said, climbing off her and running my hands over my jeans. “She found option five, thanks to you.”

“What’s option five?”

“I am.” I smiled. “I helped.”





51


    Leslie


“Helped…what?” I heard my own voice in my skull.

“You know,” Robin said. “Helped her get out. Helped her shuffle off this mortal whatever.”

“You’re lying,” I said. I was shaking. “You’re messing with me again. Stop—stop it—”

Robin gave a little shriek of frustration and rolled around on the floor. “Oh my God,” she moaned into the carpet, slightly muffled. “I thought you were over this by now.” She sat up and glared at me. It was nearing noon and the study had been slowly brightening as we spoke. Little flyaway hairs glowed around her head. “You did this all through our teens and it really fucked with my head, you know, Leslie.”