What A Lie

Paul cheated regularly and she knew it. She should know with how obvious he made it last week. He made it easy for her to suspect it. He wouldn’t take the blame for ending their relationship. It was best if she left him with resentment rather than regret. It would be easier to stomach.

He sat slouched in his recliner, cheek resting to his knuckles, a bottle of beer clutched loosely in his left hand. Across the living room in the dim yellow light, his wife sat on the sofa, her round eyes sunken and swollen at the same time. After twenty years of marriage, three children and an ongoing fight against cancer, nothing of the radiant beauty he had married remained.

Nothing … he remembered loving remained.

Yet they remained in stagnant apathy for the past five months. She would stare at the wall behind him for hours until she slept where she sat. Never speaking, never moving. She had deteriorated into a skeleton that would fall in the presence of a gentle breeze. Her dirty blond hair had finally managed to return after treatment but it never grew past her shoulders and always fell out.

He scratched his chin, turning the other way. He couldn’t look at her anymore.

“I never loved you,” she suddenly whispered.

Neither of them was drunk. Neither could lie effectively to the other after so long together. She wiped the tears on her face and hung her head, her thin blond hair falling over her face.

Paul squinted, straightening a bit in his seat. “What?”

She looked him in the eyes and pursed her lips. “I never loved you,” she whispered again.

Why the lie? He chuckled mirthlessly. “You married me.”

“I did,” she nodded.

He squinted, sitting forward. “Then … you’re lying,” he insisted.

“The only things I love are my kids. I’d have believed I was a sociopath if I could say I didn’t love them.” She shrugged a bony shoulder, staring at him as though he were the most pitiful creature she had ever seen.

“What the hell do you mean you never loved me?”

She took a deep breath and ran her eyes over the wall behind him. “I don’t know. I realized it when your lady friend left her … thong in our bed.”

“You’re lying,” he sat back, confident in his accusation. How could she stay with him for twenty years if she didn’t love him? How could she – why was there no hesitation or deceit in her gaze? Why was she smiling so peacefully? “You’re just mad I cheated.”

She closed her eyes and rested her head back with a serene smile on her face. “I was relieved to know I never had to sleep with you again.”

His face burned red and anger bubbled with nausea in his chest. “LIAR!”

“If that’s what you want to believe.” She pulled the white throw blanket on, hooked them over her shoulders and closed her eyes to sleep where she had slept since she had discovered he was cheating.

Paul shot up, his chest heaving. He clenched his fists, the full bottle quivering in his grasp. He shouted the word over and over again, threw the bottle to the stairs where it shattered. She never opened her eyes or flinched. He yanked the blanket off her and pulled her to her feet by the shirt. “You’re lying to me.”

Her cold fingers clamped around his wrist, not an ounce of fear in her as she steadied herself. Her pale blue eyes held his in place. She didn’t say a word. He shook her in fury, demanding she speak.

“DAD!” his eldest son, Derek, came rushing over in horror, prying him away from his mother. He cradled her and lowered her to sit as his brother and sister came over hesitantly.

“Are you drunk?” Derek demanded. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Humiliation burned through his veins. He clicked his tongue and stormed up to his room but no sleep came to him. No comfort in this bed he had shared with her for twenty years. She was probably drunk. But she didn’t drink. Then she was high off her meds. She didn’t love him?

What a lie!

What a joke.

***

The scent of cinnamon and coffee woke him early the next morning, the clatter of pans and dishes in the kitchen and his kids arguing just like every morning. He washed up and came down for the weekend. 

The kids became silent, seating themselves. Maggie smiled sweetly when she saw him and kissed his cheek and wiped it away because he would do it if she didn’t, just like every morning. She served him French toast with bacon and coffee. Like every morning.

He sat down, could last night have been a nightmare?

His kids watched him warily, their blue eyes the spitting image of Maggie’s. Derek had a sour glare on his face he usually associated with the teenage temperament.

That wasn’t it today.

Maggie joined them, beside him and asked what their plans were for the weekend. Derek wanted shoes for a basketball game, Jennie wanted to buy a dress for a dance and Mike wanted a new book.

“Then the mall?” Maggie smiled. They nodded excitedly and added to the list of things they all needed.

Paul sat in bewilderment: Derek played basketball? What dance was a twelve-year-old girl attending? Little Mikey could read …?

“What – what dance?” he asked.

“The father-daughter dance,” Derek said.

“When?” Paul asked.

“Tonight,” Jennie smiled.

“That’s a little short-notice, Jen. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

The table got silent, all eyes on him except Maggie’s. “I told you two months ago. You said you’re busy on Saturdays. Derek said he’ll take me,” she smiled happily.

A black hole opened at the pit of his abdomen. Saturday? That was when ….

His eyes shifted to Maggie as she ate her eggs calmly. Why did it just occur to him that his homebody wife had developed a love for going out every Saturday? “Everybody get ready? We’ll go see Grandma and Grandpa first.”

“Yes,” Mikey pumped his fists. They scrambled up and scattered to get dressed. Maggie cleaned the table, all but his plate. She finished and stood by him.

“Are you finished, honey?”

He stared at the plate, an incessant burn in his throat swelling up to his eyes. “How long have you known?” he asked, his voice quivering.

“Known what, honey?”

He gulped hard. She knew he was cheating on her. Since day one. “What do you want?”

“Your plate?”

“Why are you doing this?!” he shouted, shooting up.

She blinked up at him, her eyes tired yet calm. “Doing what?”

“If you never loved me, why are you with me?” he lowered his voice as it broke.

She giggled as though the answer was obvious. “Because you loved me once.”

Paul’s forehead creased as Derek came in and led his mother away.

***

The bell rang at noon as it did every Saturday. He stood by it, unable to lift his arm to open it for the beautiful, young woman that stood behind it. He waited for her to leave but she kept knocking and ringing the bell until he opened. She raised her eyebrows at him, a woman so beautiful he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was a new one every Saturday and they kept getting prettier.

“Are we doing this or not?”

She went up to his room and waited for him to follow. She set her purse down, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his lips. “Ready?”

Paul stepped back, running his hand over his bald head, distraught. “Why are you here?”

She squinted. “Um … because you’re paying me to be? Aren’t you Paul Witta?”

“What’s your name?”

“Sabrina,” she folded her arms over her chest. “Are you drunk?”

Because you loved me once.

“What does that mean?” he said.

Sabrina sighed in frustration and eventually left.

He wandered the house, checking his children’s rooms and then his own. Maggie maintained it even though she was never in it. She did his laundry even though she didn’t love him. She made him food and cared for his children and … wasn’t she sick with cancer?

He sat in her place in the living room and stared at the wall like she always did. Pictures were glued to the wall, one after the other, a visual timeline of their twenty years together. From the day they got married to the present days. He got up and searched for himself in the recent images: Derek taught Mike to ride a bike? All of the children wearing wigs like their mother, beaming at the camera. Mike reading a book? Derek playing basketball? Jennie presenting a toy car she built from garbage scraps? When did it all happen?

He wasn’t part of his own family anymore.

Since when?

***

The kids returned dressed up and exhausted. Maggie came down in her pajamas and glued a new picture to the wall over his seat as he watched from hers. She took her blanket from the back of the couch beside him and took a seat on the adjacent couch.

“What do you mean because you loved me once?”

She curled up tiredly and smiled at him. “You once said you loved me for me so I trusted my heart to you. You weren’t the first to say it but I could tell you were the first to mean it. I thought, maybe, I could learn to love from you. You seemed to know what it was.”

“What about all those times we made love?”

“I don’t know what that means,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

“What about all of the times you said I love you?!”

“I wish nothing but the best for you and every human being.”

“You never loved me?!” his voice broke.

She opened her tired eyes and watched him with her empty smile. “By what standard do you measure love, Paul? Would you think I loved you if I was physically attracted to you? If I gave my life to you? Is it love if I killed for you? If I died for you? Is it love if I got happy for you when you get what you want? If I submit to your whims and requests unconditionally? If I worked a full-time job to support your family while you played around and drank beer all day?”

She waited for him to answer but he couldn’t understand. What was she saying? “I’ve done all of that for you, Paul.” She shrugged, a tear streaking down her cheek. “Do you love me?”

“Died for me? You worked for me? Killed –”

“I was supposed to have four kids, Paul,” she interrupted so sharply it made him jump. “My eldest child would be a daughter if you hadn’t fooled me into thinking that ibuprofen was a Plan B. I will never forgive you for that.”

Paul’s stomach dropped. “No matter what I gave you, you never love me. Love poisons the beautiful girl who gives it to a man that only loves with his eyes. You haven’t loved me since Derek ripped through my skin. You’ll never love me again. I’ve come to terms with that. I’m at peace. Leave me be or get out of my house – yes, my house, the one I’ve broken my heart, soul and bones to buy.”

She reached for the lamp on the side desk and switched it off, whispering her good night.

***

He tried to leave. To live alone. To be alone. He would go visit sometimes and the house would go silent and cold, his children uncomfortable and stiff in his presence. Maggie recovered and relief filled his broken heart. He didn’t know how heavy the weight of waiting for her death had pressed down on his heart. But there was no room in her heart, her house or her life for him.

The silence of his small apartment made his ears ring. No matter how much he cleaned or how dirty it got, it was never home. No matter how much he worked, he had to go back to the empty silence so he spent long nights out. No matter which woman he was with, it never satisfied.

Even though they had not divorced, he knew there was no returning to Maggie. Even though she welcomed him for visits and fed him and smiled at him her same radiant smile, he knew … it was a pure love. One he had never given her.

One night on the couch as he stared at the wall consumed with the memories of his family’s life without him, Maggie joined him with a cup of tea. For a long time, they were quiet and it was a silence that filled his heart and broke it at the same time. Tears poured down his cheeks. 

“Paul,” Maggie said in her soft voice, “did you ever love me before now?”

Paul wiped his face hard and hung his head in shame. “Yes….”

She giggled. “What a lie."