THE TROUBLE WITH THE TRUTH
By
Cappuccino Girl
Disclaimer: I'm merely taking Boomtown and its
characters out for a play. They aren't mine. Collin, however, is the author's
own creation.
Rating: PG
Notes: The majority of this was written while
listening to Patty Loveless' 1996 album. As result, I felt it was only right
that this story should bare the same name. Enormous thanks go out to my
incredible beta readers, Amber and Jessica, who helped clean up this saga.
Summary: She wants to know if this is where affairs end. Do they end as
quietly as they start, with all the drama and none of the
allure?
ON THIS SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Andrea is laying under
an avocado tree, enjoying the soft breeze and the latest Amy Hassinger novel.
Under her deck chair, two dogs vie for shade. She is forty-four and the editor
for LA Magazine. For the past six years, her life has resembled an impossible
ideal: A job most people can only dream of, the perfect five bedroom house with
a pool -- all decorated by an interior designer friend of hers-- and Collin, her
dark haired, blue-eyed husband who somehow manages to keep nine to six hours
while working as an executive for Showtime Television. When she was young, she
was convinced that there was no way that one could have it all, yet as she laid
awake at 5 AM on the night of their first wedding anniversary, she realized that
she did.
The dogs had come later. She'd been away visiting her mother in
San Francisco who was undergoing open-heart surgery and Collin was unable to
join her. He'd told her how terrible he felt and she'd sat out on the deck with
her packed bags saying, "Sometimes you can't abandon your life, even if you want
to." Those words had haunted him while she was gone, while she didn't call for
three days and he left unheard messages on her cell phone. He thought she was
running from him, from the perfection he tried so hard to create for
her.
On the Saturday as he was coming back from the gym, he walked past
the glass front of a convenience store ads plastered across the left window.
"Six Irish Setter puppies looking for loving owners to share their lives." He'd
written down the number on the palm of his hand and the next day he'd collected
Jordan and Carly, the only two remaining of the litter. He'd taken them home in
a carton and put a ticking clock next to their beds and stayed up with them
while they whined for their mother.
In San Francisco, Andrea became a forty
year old orphan. She phoned her husband the next day.
"I'll come
immediately," he said, "but I have to drive."
"Can't you be sensible and
catch a plane?"
"I can't explain. I have to drive. Trust me."
And she
did. Andrea waited at the house with a neighbor who was dancing a fine line
between awareness and senility, but made everything better with her kind
expression and constant offerings of herbal teas.
Collin pulled up the
drive to what was his mother-in-law's fancy home and, putting a puppy under each
arm, greeted his grieving wife.
"Puppies? Why did you do that?" Andrea
asked later that night while he held her in his arms.
"I wanted it to be
perfect. I thought that you'd be back in a few days time and that we'd spend
this weekend playing with the dogs in the garden and then, when they're older,
you could take them with you when you go for a run down to the park like you
always do. We could watch them grow up." He ran his hand through her hair. "I
suppose this all seems horribly wrong now, doesn't it?"
She shook her head.
"No. No, it doesn't. It's just… Life has a way of turning everything stable
upside down and shaking it about like a cocktail waiter."
Collin kissed
her, and together, they watched the puppies sleep at their feet.
Andrea
had always been more of a cat person.
~* *~
SHE WAS FOUR
YEARS OUT OF COLLEGE and desperate to prove herself, tired of charming her way
through life. It was the second week of March when she woke up one morning,
dressed in her best dark gray Ralph Lauren suit, put on eyeliner as well as her
usual bluish-gray eye-shadow and then drove down to the District Attorney's
office at precisely 7 miles above the legal speed limit in order to meet a Mr.
David McNorris. She thought nothing of the meeting, yet it was significant. This
was her first major story. She, Andrea Little, was writing a profile on the new
deputy DA. It would be good, this profile. In fact, it would be spectacular. She
was certain that this would her big career breakthrough. Everyone would read
this profile and say: this woman can write and we want her for our paper. She
would be headhunted, and once in her new office, all of the established
colleagues would be envious of her talents. Her life would be changed
forever.
She made her presence known to the tiny woman who was at
reception and took a seat in the waiting area. The air-conditioning failed to
stop her palms from sweating, and they slowly began to stick to the leather
sofa. She moved them onto her knees to dry.
"Miss Little?"
She looked up
and saw an extraordinary figure before her. She stood up and stuck out her hand.
"Yes. Hi. You're David McNorris I presume?"
"Indeed."
"I'm here
to-"
"Write the profile. I know. My secretary informed me of
everything."
"That's good."
"Let's go to my office and discuss your
plans."
She followed him into a large room with piles of legal books, a big
oak desk and four bottles of vodka and Jack Daniels concealed in the bottom
drawer.
"I know you're busy," she began.
"I have an hour free for you in
my schedule right now."
"Then I'll get right to those general fact type
things, if it's okay with you. I have an ice-breaker question written down
somewhere." She flipped through her notepad, occasionally running her hand
through her hair in a half nervous, half flirtatious action. He found her oddly
compelling to watch. "There." He noticed how she cringed when she read what she
had written. "Give me a run down of your average day."
"Am I on the record?"
he asked, pointing to her little silver dictaphone.
"All the time, but I'm
selective." She smiled, "Also, while I think of it, we'll need some pictures of
you at home."
THREE WEEKS LATER, on the hottest April day in twenty
years, Marian opened her house to two young photographers and Andrea, who had
impulsively decided to join them even though she would be of no use. They took
shots of David in his office at home, of him and Marian in the lounge, of David
in the garden, and two extra ones just in case. Marian, the perfect hostess,
made dinner for her husband and their guests once the work was finished. When
the last drop of wine was poured out of the bottle and dinner long eaten, the
group gradually began to disperse.
They were sitting out by the pool,
David and Andrea, listening to the flies being zapped by the electric blue
light.
"We used to have one of these," she said as she removed her sandals.
"I remember my dad bought it when I was a junior in high school, and there was
this one girl, Susan, and she was all into animal protection and new age stuff,
and I had this pool party for my birthday, and she had this total fit when the
thing nuked the bugs. All my other friends laughed at her. You know, I don't
think we ever spoke after that."
"She can't really have liked you if she
ignored you because of bug deterrents."
"I don't think anyone really liked me
in high school."
"Geek?"
"No," she laughed and it was infectious. "The
opposite."
"I liked girls like you."
"You and all the other boys."
He
kicked a pebble into the pool and leaned back onto the wooden recliner. It was
dark outside and the sky was clear. The muffled noise of Marion talking with the
two photographers seeped through the living room window.
After a while,
David said, "I don't think it's fair."
Andrea spun her head around, confused
and startled at once. He smirked a little at her reaction. "What?" she
asked.
"Because you're the reporter, you get to ask all the
questions."
"That's how it works."
"Lawyers cross examine too. We should
reverse roles."
"Why should I?"
David sat up so that he was facing her,
his eyes meeting hers for the first time. "Born?"
She could tell that he was
serious now, yet still unpredictable and it gave her a pleasant adrenalin surge.
With false confidence, she began to offer information. "Los
Angeles."
"Parents?"
"Very
separated."
"Siblings?"
"None."
"School?"
"Batchelor's degree in
journalism from Berkley."
"Married?"
Andrea stopped, suddenly aware of how
they had drifted closer. His hand now rested on her chair. She stared at it,
wondered how it got there, and whether it could be viewed as compromising should
Marion chose to come outside. She purposefully picked it up and moved it aside
so that she could pass.
The unease remained in spire of her efforts. Pacing
along the edge of the pool, she pulled her hair tie out, then came back to put
on her shoes. David watched her intently as she fussed with the buckles.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked.
"Because all the guys liked
you."
She pulled herself up and made a move towards the patio door. "I'm
going to see if your wife needs any help."
"Are you one of those anal neat
freaks they have on daytime TV?"
She turned and rolled her eyes at him. "No.
But I do have a way of wielding the duster that will make your head
spin."
SHE CALLED HIS OFFICE for follow-up questions because she
liked the unexpected humor her work brought with it. She thought it was the way
she was required to invade people's lives in order to get 'the story' which made
it so laughable at times. David added further to her enjoyment because he knew
how to play her questions. He would try to tease an entirely different meaning
out of them and she'd laugh, gently, and shield her eyes with her hand from the
sunlight that poured through his office window.
"Aren't these questions
a little personal?" David clutched the top of his head with his hand and leaned
back in his creaking leather chair.
"This is supposed to be a profile, in
fact a 'personal profile', so I don't think I'm out of line here," she retorted.
"But my wife? What has Marian got to do with me?"
"Oh Jesus. Do you
really want that on my dictaphone?"
"I'll take the heat."
"I have no
doubt about that."
She twirled the eraser end of her pencil around in her
mouth and gave him an appraising stare. "This isn't something for law review,
it's a profile on the person, and in this case that would be you."
"It's all
about me then."
"Don't let it get to your head. I have enough incriminating
evidence here to put you in jail for a month." Andrea stood up and went to get
her purse and just as she pulled it from the hook on the coat rack, she felt a
hand pull her around.
David kissed her.
She didn't
resist.
SHE USED TO BELIEVE that moments like this happened in slow
motion, as though there was a way to pause them, to reverse them. It is as
though one knows they will happen, and maybe intrinsically we all do, but there
is no way to stop them. Somehow (and she wishes she could recall the details),
she found herself naked on the bed in her excessively glamorous apartment. The
room was ice-cold and David stood up and pulled the balcony door open, a hot
gust of air hitting them both in the face. He reached for the bottle of Bacardi,
which sat on the window ledge, and poured himself half a glass. Then, without
moving from where he had initially planted his feet, he stared into the
neighbor's garden while he drained the alcohol.
It was the first time
she had explored the thought that he might be a personification of her worst
fears, a psychological mirror image of her father. It disgusted her that she
might even consider such a thought, but as he stood there, emptying the last
drops of the first glass and refilling it, she could not deny the obvious. She'd
sworn so many times that she would never end up with someone who was an
alcoholic, and as a result she had gone through a list of every other
quasi-dangerous type who came her way: drug pusher, biker, bodyguard, fire
fighter, FBI agent, and most recently Martin, who had a frighteningly large
collection of Russian porn in a cabinet in his spare bedroom.
David made
his way back into bed, leaving the window open so that they could hear the noise
of the city; the distant sirens and the soft shifting of gravel as the guard
dogs across the road paced the fence.
"You're writing a story," he said,
groping around in the dark for her breasts. When his fingers touched her smooth
skin, she laughed softly. He was amazed every time by how the sound of that
laugh made him want to do the most frivolous thing imaginable. She'd laugh and
he might say, "I'm going to toss in my job and buy us a beach house (or you
could buy us a beach house) and we'll never leave except to get sunscreen and
food." He liked the way the back of her hair swished over her shoulder blades,
how she didn't yell at him over domestic affairs because there were none.
"I am writing a story, a story about you," she whispered, unexpectedly
at ease again.
"X-rated story?"
MARIAN HAD TAKEN an unexpected yet
rather convenient liking to Andrea, and David, being the type to take advantage
of such things, invited her and the two photographers over for dinner to
celebrate the publication of the four-page article.
The five sat around
the dinner table, Andrea and Marian discovering a shared a love of Moroccan
artwork while they picked their way through the remainders of their Thai
noodles. The two women laughed at how David had made a pile of water chestnuts
at the edge of his plate. Julian, one of the two photographers, backed him up,
saying, "I'm only eating them because I'm a guest here."
Marian smiled, a
little embarrassed. "You know, I once went for this horrendous meal while I was
taking my teacher training. They served pasta and the sauce was so bad, and
there I was, really hungry, but unable to control this gag-reflex." She covered
her mouth delicately with her hand to suppress her playful laughter, and at that
moment, Andrea could see precisely why David was in love with this woman. It was
her understated mannerisms that made her so compelling.
David hadn't noticed
them. He was far too fixated on Andrea gesturing with her chopsticks as she told
of her own horror-dinners. There were many. There were the glitzy soirees with
her parents at each other's throats, during which she tried desperately to find
them individual conversational partners so that they wouldn't have to cross
paths. There were awful interview luncheons with various B-list celebrities, and
(and these she did not share) drunken black-tie sorority affairs where she never
fit in because she didn't touch a drop of alcohol.
When the laughter
around the table had died down, Marian headed for the kitchen to let the ice
cream thaw out a little, and Julian set to teasing the cat with a flyaway strand
he had pulled from his jeans. Andrea made her way down the hallway to locate the
restroom in order to remove an eyelash which she was convinced was still stuck
in her eye. She'd barely gone past the door which lead to the kitchen, when she
felt a yank on her wrist. Her socks slid terribly on the tiled floor, and there
was no way for her to resist.
"God, I've been waiting all evening for
this," David breathed into her ear.
"We can't do this," she whispered as he
tugged her into the music room. "Your wife is in the house. She's in the
kitchen."
"I know."
"You have no sense of decency or danger, do
you?"
He kissed her hard, shoved her against the piano. Andrea stood there,
mildly stunned and resenting her enjoyment in the risk. "Danger lets you know
you're still alive," he said.
"As does your kissing me."
"Should we try
it again?"
Andrea leaned forward and touched his lips. Just as David's
fingers were moving up her top, she heard voices coming from the hallway and
quickly recoiled. She shoved him into the corner behind the door and put her
hand over his mouth. Both listened intently. Once the noise had died down, she
removed her hand.
"What was that about?"
"We're going to get
caught."
"She was just pointing Chloe to the restroom."
"Your wife."
Andrea paused and took a step away him. "I should go back. You wait here a
moment." She ran her hand down his chest before slipping out of the room.
~* *~
SHE HADN'T SEEN DAVID in six years, and then as if
out of nowhere (as such encounters inevitably occur), he was standing in front
of her in the queue at the Bread & Circus. They didn't know where to begin,
what they could possibly say to each other, so they stood in silence staring
over one another's shoulders while the cashier scanned in bagels and vegetables.
David appeared the same as always, except his eyes weren't glazed over like they
used to be. Andrea looked a little older, a little blonder, and she wore glasses
now and dressed in longer floral skirts. He handed over his credit card to pay
without breaking eye contact with Andrea, and asked, "Are you married?"
She
smiled. "Yes," and twisted the wedding band around her finger. "Five years."
David signed the receipt and handed it back to the cashier. He hadn't packed
his things so they all laid in a heap at the end of the checkout. Andrea's batch
was being scanned in, so they stood at the end of the conveyor-belt and packed
their bags together.
"And what about you?" she asked, handing him a carton
of strawberries which had made its way into her pile. "You seeing
anyone?"
"Not so much seeing as…"
She smiled, fondly remembering being in
love with such a stereotypical bad boy. "You haven't changed, have you?"
"I
haven't touched a drop since you threw me out."
"Oh really?"
"Not
one."
Andrea handed over two ten dollar bills to the cashier, all the while
giving David an appraising stare. "I thought people didn't change." She took the
three dollars, looped the bags around her middle and index fingers and wandered
out of the store in silence. David walked beside her. Eventually she pointed
with her car-key towards a navy blue SUV saying, "Anyway, this is mine. It's
been good to see you again, even if it was at a grocery store."
He nodded
and she tossed her bags into the trunk. After a minute, he touched her shoulder
hoping that he might think of the perfect thing to tell her in parting. Nothing
came. "Maybe I'll catch you again sometime."
She smacked the trunk lid down.
"Maybe."
He walked away.
~* *~
SHE SAT ON THE KITCHEN
COUNTER in her fancy apartment which couldn't buy her happiness but let her be
unhappy in aesthetically pleasing surroundings and examined the tips of her
hair. The sunlight was beginning to glimmer through the glass door. Neither of
them had slept that night. Andrea's robe was draped over her shoulders, untied
at her waist. The room smelled of last night's dinner. She knew the conversation
that would ensue like she knew the route to work. It happened without thinking
and every time she wanted to beg for him to change his mind, but she didn't.
Andrea didn't plead. Sometimes she'd wear pretty silk tops for persuasion, but
she was far too proud to plead.
"I can go in late to work today," he
said.
Andrea looked straight at him, startled. She smiled but couldn't hide
the growing sickness in her stomach.
David disposed of yesterdays coffee
filter, and refilled it. "I thought you'd be pleased."
"I am," she tried to
assure him.
He placed two green mugs on the surface and located the soymilk
in the fridge. It was two days past its expiration date, so he proceeded to let
it slosh unceremoniously down the sink.
"It's not about going to work
late, or being able to go out to dinner together, or you making up another lie
when she calls your cell phone." She paused for a moment and gazed out of the
window. "I stood in the line at the supermarket yesterday and I saw your wife
and she was looking at me, like she knew I was the home wrecker, and I wanted to
go over there and tell her something to make her feel better, you know. And
sometimes I see her in the morning when I go to get my coffee, and I get this
urge to drop my act for a moment."
"The world's a stage and all of us merely
players."
"Fuck you, David," she spat, jumping off the counter-top and
storming off into the bathroom, a stream of red silk robe billowing behind her.
"I don't know about you, but I like the game," he called.
She turned on
the faucet, the bathroom filling with a cloud of steam, and sat down on the
toilet lid.
"You forgot the milk," he said poking his head around the
door and shoving a mug of coffee into her hand.
"Excuse me?"
"When you
went on your guilt-ridden grocery shopping trip, you forgot the milk."
Andrea's mug clanked down onto the edge of the bathtub. "What is wrong with
you?" she scowled.
"Right back at you. But I've seen this before.
Hormones."
"Were you born without a capacity for guilt?"
"What am I guilty
of?"
Her jaw dropped noticeably, and David gawked back at her, equally
baffled.
"I don't know why women get so caught up in this fidelity shit," he
remarked.
"Fidelity shit?"
David wandered carelessly back out of the
bathroom. Andrea stomped after him. "That's what it essentially is," he went on,
"some bullshit technique of the law or the church or whateverthefuck to make us
suppress our feelings toward others."
"Don't you value your wife?" she
exclaimed.
"I value you," he said, opening the refrigerator. Andrea peered
at him over the door. "I've valued all the women I've been with, excluding that
screaming old…" his voice trailed off as he realized that this might be
revealing slightly too much information.
He closed the door, holding
yogurt in one hand and a banana in the other. Andrea stood still and stared at
him while he prepared his breakfast, meticulously slicing his banana and
dropping it into the yogurt, then sprinkling granola over it.
Eventually, she composed herself enough to say coldly, "I'm like the
others, aren't I? What are their names? Tasha and Kaitlyn and Britney. Or do you
work your way through the alphabet and now you've run out so you started at 'A'
again?"
David shoved a spoon of breakfast into his mouth and gave her the
same glance you would give a thirteen year old when they ask if they may go out
to a party on a school night. "Your bath," he stated
matter-of-factly.
"What?"
"Your bath. The water's still
running."
"Shit!"
Andrea ran off down the hallway, cussing as she went.
When she fell into the room, the towel on the floor was sodden with hot water
that cascaded over the sides of the bathtub. David abandoned his food, and
together they mopped up the flood in silence. The next day was
Halloween.
~* *~
SHE WAS WORKING LATE at the magazine that
night and had eaten with her colleagues while they pieced together the articles
for November. At mid-day she had phoned Collin, apologizing for abandoning him
for another evening, and he'd assured her that it was fine and that he
understood. As hard as she tried to suppress it, her conscience was uneasy and
eventually, at 8.30, she said that they'd call it a day.
Andrea pulled
up the drive to find a red sports car blocking her parking space. Confused, she
left her car standing halfway through the gate and made her way in through the
back door. The dogs greeted her quietly, wagging their tails but without
barking. She petted them absentmindedly, noticing the remains of dinner that
were still sitting in pots on the stove. After having deposited her briefcase
beside the living room couch, she carried on up the stairs, shedding her shoes
and shawl as she went.
"Collin?" she called. There was no answer.
In
the back of her mind, she knew what she would find. It would now be her turn to
feel the disgust which Marian must have felt those years ago. 'What goes around,
comes around,' her grandmother used to crow with sadistic delight. Andrea
delayed her steps as she walked towards the bedroom. The door was closed.
Unusual. Hesitantly pushing down on the handle, she opened the door and placed
one foot inside. It was dark, and she found herself forced to flip on the light.
Casting her gaze around the room, she noticed that it was empty. Still anxious,
she managed to settle down enough to put her shawl over the back of the bed and,
pulling a holey pair of jeans and a slate-blue sweater out of the closet,
proceeded to change. Having hung her suit up again, she put her hair into a
messy twist and traipsed around the upstairs hallway.
"Collin?"
Still
silence. Carly had joined her, weaving between her legs in a desperate ploy for
attention, but Andrea was in no mind to appease the dog. The office was empty,
so was the library and two guest bedrooms. Wandering downstairs and collapsing
onto the couch, it occurred to her that, excluding the two dogs, she was the
only one in the house.
She leaned over the back of the couch to the
drinks table and poured herself a large glass of lukewarm tonic water. As she
swished the fizzy liquid around in its glass, she remembered Marian, and how, no
matter how hard she would like to erase what she had done to somebody who might
still have been her friend, it continued to hang over her, an eternal damnation.
She believed that women who had never been cheated upon, and also women who had
never reduced themselves so much as to be 'the other woman' would not instantly
conclude that a strange car and no visible guests downstairs implied a naked
other in the bedroom. It disgusted her and made her itch her wrists in
discomfort.
As she took another sip of her drink, she heard a key in the
front door and the two dogs shot up.
"Andrea?"
"In here," she
called.
Collin strode into the living room, sporting a faded baseball cap
which didn't suit him. He pulled it off his head and leaned forward to kiss his
wife. "I didn't think you'd be back until way after ten."
"Neither did I, but
I managed to talk my way out of yet another late night." She took the cap from
him and dropped it onto the arm of the sofa.
"If I would have known, I
wouldn't have told Allison that she could park her car there."
"Allison,"
Andrea sighed. She felt completely stupid. Of course she knew that Allison from
down the road drove a red convertible.
"She decided to repaint her garage and
she doesn't have a drive as you know, and the new people who're moving in next
door need the parking space on either side of the road. I saw her as I was
walking the dogs a few hours ago and said she could park in our drive if she
wanted because you weren't supposed to be back until late," he explained.
Andrea sighed. "No, I wasn't, was I?" She placed both of her elbows on her
legs, and rested her head on the palms of her hands.
Collin sat down
next to her on the couch and watched her in silence for a moment before saying,
"Are you okay? You look a little drained."
She looked up at him, "Yes, I'm
fine. It's just been a long day."
"You want some dinner?"
Andrea shook
her head.
"Dessert?"
"No. I'm okay."
"Should we take the dogs for a
walk around the block and then go to bed?"
Their agreement was
understood, and Andrea went to fetch the leashes from their hook bellow the
telephone while Collin found Andrea her sneakers. They both met one another at
the door and exchanged goods; she putting on her shoes and he fixing the collars
and leashes onto the dogs. She stopped tying her shoelaces and looked up at him
for a moment. "Where were you when I got home?" she asked. "You were out and I
expected you to be here. Got kind of worried."
Collin paused, his eyes
darting back and forth. Both dogs were pulling hard on their leashes, desperate
to go. "You know, running a few errands and things."
Andrea nodded, and
opened the door for him. Together, they walked out of the house in silence and
down the well-lit road.
~* *~
SHE REMEMBERS HER ANGER
when a panic stricken David had crashed her apartment in fear that he might have
killed someone in a drunken haze. She remembers dialing a familiar number the
next day and how the click of the receiver had echoed when Marian slammed the
phone down. She never spoke to Marian again. It is possible that if the two were
to meet today that Marian would blank her. It would be perfectly justified.
Andrea wishes she had an explanation for how writing a simple profile escalated
into the cliché of a seedy affair. She wishes that she could regret her actions
at that time, but she doesn't.
Across from her, Collin pulls himself up
out of the pool and reaches for a towel. She watches him carefully. He has
changed, she decides. He seems more relaxed now than he did six months ago. He
was very agitated then, the slightest question putting him on edge. Frequently,
she had contemplated asking him whether he was nervous about the cut backs at
work or whether there was something else. She could ask him now. It would be
easy and not out of place for her to remark upon his visibly calm state of
mind.
She smiles at him from her place in the shade. "Good swim?"
He
nods and rubs himself down with the towel.
Andrea goes back to her book.
*******
the
end
*******
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the
author loves feedback. please send any and all to
cappuccinogirlie@hotmail.com
