Even When You Lie to Me (30 page)

The day we graduated was bright and clear, the sky so blue it looked endless.

Everyone looked incredibly young in the sunshine. As I stood there listening to Dr. Crowley speak, I felt a silly, sentimental swell of love for them. I heard my parents cheer as I clutched my diploma.

I couldn’t help searching the bleachers, but he hadn’t come. In a way I was relieved.

Afterward I remembered that I’d left a jacket in my locker, and I ran inside. I couldn’t help taking one last look at our English classroom. He had never decorated the walls with posters or charts, and the room had always seemed a little bare. But now his desk was empty; most of his stuff had been gone for weeks, but he had left a few things—extra copies of books, old handouts and outdated syllabi—and someone had come by and cleared those out too. I realized suddenly that he wouldn’t get to sign my yearbook, something I had thought about occasionally before everything had happened. It seemed stupid now that I had been looking forward to it so much: so naive of me, hoping for so little.

When I turned back into the hall, he was there. He looked exactly the same as he always had, but something about him had changed.

“Hi,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

He smiled ruefully. “I wasn’t sure I would either. But…” He shrugged. “It didn’t seem right, not seeing you graduate.”

I nodded. “Well, thanks for showing up. It’s been a nice day.”

“You guys looked great out there,” he said. “You looked like the future.”

“I guess we are,” I said.

“A somewhat terrifying thought,” he said, “now that I’ve spent a year with Frank.”

I smiled a little. “True.”

“You know, I realized the other day I never got you an internship for the summer.”

“Oh,” I said. “I actually…I found something on my own.” I hadn’t, but I knew I could. I didn’t need his help anymore. “Um, anyway, my parents are expecting me, so…”

“Oh,” he said. “Of course.”

“But it was nice to see you. You know, good luck with everything.” I started to turn away and he caught my arm.

“Charlie,” he said. He looked sick. “I just came because I wanted to— I know I owe you an apology. I owe you an apology so big that words can’t begin to touch it.”

“Yeah, you do.” My eyes clouded as I said it. I paused, trying to gather my thoughts. “You don’t deserve my forgiveness,” I said finally.

“I know,” he said.

“You don’t deserve even getting to ask for it.”

“I know,” he said again.

“You don’t deserve getting to come here.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I glanced into the classroom so I wouldn’t have to see his face. “Why are you even here? What do you want?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I had to see with my own eyes that they were allowing Sean to graduate.”

I tried to frown at him so I wouldn’t laugh, but the expression wouldn’t stick. I looked up at the ceiling and then down again. “Why did you leave?”

“I had to,” he said. He stepped toward me. “If I could change it, I would.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want you to change it. You don’t get to do that.
I
want to— I want to decide how it ends. Okay? I get to write it. I get to decide.”

“Okay,” he said quietly.

We stood there in silence for a minute. I stared at his hands, his feet, his ears, his mouth, his eyes. He seemed so ordinary now, just some guy I could have passed on the street. I never would have looked at him twice. I felt sad for him then, and all the anger drained away. He was just a person. Nothing more or less.

Suddenly I wanted to give him something, but I only had one thing left.

“Let’s pretend,” I said finally. “Let’s pretend we got married. In a castle in Germany.”

He looked startled for a second, and then the corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes became glassy. “You’re sure you…you want to…”

I nodded. He knew how this worked, and what to say, and how I wanted him to lie. He’d taught me.

He uncrossed his arms and cleared his throat. “I protested, but you got your way.”

“The food was awful. Bratwurst.”

“The DJ played Kraftwerk all night.”

“My parents got drunk and made out on the dance floor.”

“But you looked radiant,” he said. “I could never forget it.”

My breath hitched, but I kept going. “You looked ridiculous,” I said. “You insisted on wearing lederhosen.”

“And the alpine hat,” he said. “It looked jaunty.” He stepped closer. “
Tirolerhut,
if you want to get technical.”

“And afterward we honeymooned in Austria.”

“Every morning we were woken by flügelhorns.”

“Accordions.”

“Whatever.”

“We moved to New York.”

“For your job at the
Times.
And my residence at NYU.”

“We turned them down when they offered you tenure. We couldn’t be tied down like that.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Our kids were world travelers.”

“They turned out well, though. Rhodes Scholars.”

“They had good role models,” he said. “We loved each other.”

“Married fifty-two years,” I said. “And I never once farted on you.”

He laughed. “I can’t say the same for myself.”

I kissed him. As we pulled apart, he whispered, “Bye, Charlotte.”

I made a sound between a laugh and a sob. “Bye, Tom,” I said.

Then he was gone.

When I stepped outside, I had to shade my eyes from the sun, it was so bright.

Lila appeared out of nowhere. “Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

I nodded, my chin shaking. “I will be.”

She hooked her arm around mine. “C’mon, Asha wants to take pictures. I’m going to give her my best devil horns.” She demonstrated, knowing it would make me laugh, and it did.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Thanks first of all to Phoebe Yeh and David Dunton, my editor and agent. Without their excitement and encouragement, this book would have stayed on my laptop forever (so blame them).

Phoebe, thank you for your editorial brilliance, which improved the book in uncountable ways; your dedication (I am still convinced you don’t sleep); and your incredible, passionate, dynamo-like backing of this book and of me, which I would be suspicious of if it weren’t so genuine. David, thank you for your steadiness and your kindness, and for putting up with my incessant emails about pizza. I wanted to find an agent I liked and instead I got you, who I adore. I still owe you a Hot Dog Johnny’s (even now), but not until you get me Louis C.K.’s number.

Thanks also to the people I asked to read this thing before I even knew what I was going to do with it: Alice Swan (enthusiasm I knew was real because you do not lie, and advice on what word to lose in a crucial scene), Sung Woo (lots of excellent structural guidance), and Harriet “baggy” Reuter “Hopsgobble” Hapgood (twenty-paragraph emails, bucketloads of “WHAT are they CRAZY?” reassurance, Teacher Gave Me the D, general lols, and endless supplies of apposite gifs). And thank you to the people at Random House who’ve made the book better than I ever could have alone: Rachel Weinick (Bridgewater Commons forever), Alison Kolani, Jennifer Black, Courtney Code, Jocelyn Lange, and Alison Impey for a (third) fantastic cover.

Thanks also to: Vicki and Lindsay for not killing me, Nikki for general awesomeness, Gen and Zoe for keeping my secret, Bon for everything, my family generally for all your support and occasional sassing, Dee for all the incredible ways you’ve helped us over the years and (not) for the story about Liam Neeson, and Mom for your love and for pretending you hadn’t read the sex scenes.

Thanks to everyone who read this far for tolerating all the in-jokes.

Finally, to John, who was my first and best reader, who cries at everything, who’s talked me down from more ledges than I can count, who is kind and thoughtful and curious, who always makes me laugh even when I don’t want to, who cannot pull off a hat JUST STOP TRYING: I love you.