Alison Lurie - Truth and Consequences

“About four?”

“I’ll try,” she said.

“I’ll come then and wait.”

“That’s good.” She gathered her coat around her and slid toward the door.

As she opened it, Henry put out his hand and caught hold of hers. “Oh, Janey. I love you so much,” he said.

“Really?” Jane knew that she was not looking her best: her hair was tangled and partly full of hay, her face streaked with the snail tracks of tears.

“Yeah. Really.”

“I love you too,” she whispered. Then she shut the door behind her and made her way through the fine icy wind toward her car.

“Did you have a good talk with Reverend Bob?” Jane’s mother, Carrie, asked as Jane came from the cold dull November day into the warm, well-lit kitchen on Sunday afternoon.

“Yes, very good,” Jane lied, glancing at the pink-flowered kitchen clock. In ten minutes Henry Hull would be in the lot behind the empty Farmers’ Market, waiting for her. Somehow, she must find an excuse to be there too.

“He’s a very nice young man, isn’t he?” Carrie said, sifting flour into a mixing bowl. “Of course, nobody can ever replace Reverend Jack.” She sighed. “Would you like some coffee?” It was clear that she hoped for details of the consultation.

“No thanks,” Jane said. “I have to go back to the house now. I forgot my hair dryer and all my makeup yesterday, and I’ll need them for work tomorrow.” This was actually true.

“Oh, that’s all right.” Her mother smiled. “I can lend you—”

“And my prescriptions,” Jane hastened to add, though this was a lie: she had already finished her only prescription, for an ear infection picked up at the University swimming pool. “But I’d better go now, before it starts to snow again. I just have to stop in the bathroom.”

“Mm.” Carrie gave an understanding smile.

Upstairs, Jane’s face in the mirror looked tired and pale. If she had thought she could get away with it, she would have used some of her mother’s lipstick and blusher, but Carrie was sure to notice and think that Jane wanted to look attractive for Alan.

With every word she said, every gesture she made, Jane thought, she was digging herself deeper into a pit of lies. The phrase was that of the Reverend Bob Smithers, and he had applied it to Alan, but it belonged equally to her. Reverend Bob was in fact a nice young man, but he had been easy to lie to, unlike the Reverend Jack, who would surely have looked directly into Jane’s eyes and seen the shadow of Henry Hull there. Reverend Bob sincerely wanted to bring Jane and Alan back together as soon as possible; he had spoken of patience and love and forgiveness. Reverend Bob also wanted Alan to come in for counseling, something that would never happen, since Alan would never agree to be counseled by someone like Bob

But Jane had not told him this. She had pretended to listen and agree, and that too had been a lie. Her patience with Alan and her love for him were nearly exhausted, and she did not want to forgive him. She wanted him to vanish off the face of the earth, so she could be with Henry.

Jane’s mother Carrie also hoped that Jane and Alan would get back together eventually, but she felt there was no reason for haste. Alan needed to be taught a lesson, she had said. A bad back was no excuse for bad behavior, and if Jane stayed away for a while he would realize how much he loved her and needed her. The reaction of Jane’s father had been different. He was a taciturn man, recently retired from the local post office, who usually offered few opinions on domestic matters. But last night, after his wife had explained the situation to him, he had broken his usual silence.

“You and Alan have joint accounts at the Hopkins County Trust, right, Janey?” he had asked. “Checking and savings?”

Jane had agreed that this was so.

“Okay. Monday morning, you go down there first thing. You open up a new account in your own name, transfer half of both the old accounts into it.”

“Oh, I don’t think Janey needs to do that,” his wife had protested. “Alan isn’t going to cheat her out of anything.”

“Maybe not. But it’s best to be safe. Fellow gets involved with a floozy, he might do anything.”

“She’s not really a floozy,” Jane had said, speaking rather for the honor of the Unger Center than for that of Delia.

But her father had shaken his head. “Saw her photo in the paper. A floozy.”

Now Jane dragged a comb through her curly hair and ran downstairs. “I’ll be back soon,” she said, which was probably another lie, and hurried out.

It was already past four when she reached the Farmers’ Market parking lot, but Henry was not there. Immediately a cold wave of fear and depression washed over her. She had to see him, not just because she loved him, but because he was the only person in the world she could talk to now without lying. Over the past couple of months she had gradually become distant from her three closest friends, all of whom often said how much they admired her devotion to Alan in his illness. After she had begun to fall in love with Henry, she didn’t want to confide in them, because they would have been surprised and shocked by her disloyalty.

Now, of course, her friends would probably blame Alan for getting involved with Delia, but since Delia was a local and national celebrity, the news would be too good to keep quiet. Anyhow, if she told them about Delia and not about Henry she would be lying again, sinking deeper and deeper into the Reverend Bob’s pit of lies, which would probably resemble the construction site she had passed on the way to the Farmers’ Market: a big deep muddy hole with orange barriers around it and a pile of dirt at one side. The pit of lies was one of the gateways to hell, according to a sermon she had once heard.

Dusk was falling now, the light thickening in the bony trees by the lake, and Henry still hadn’t come. Maybe something had prevented him? Or maybe he had just decided not to come, because seeing her was too risky or too much trouble. He was still safe in his life, Jane thought for the first time, because Delia didn’t know anything about her.

Slowly, inexorably, the air darkened, and the slatted stalls of the Farmers’ Market began to look more and more like empty chicken coops. Don’t you want to be free? Henry had said last week. Well, now she was free, but he wasn’t, because he was still living with Delia. He hadn’t told Delia anything; maybe he wasn’t planning to tell her anything. Maybe he wanted to stay with her, even if they weren’t really married and she only allowed hanky-panky, because she was so much more rich and glamorous and famous and interesting than Jane. Maybe for him Jane was like what he’d said about Delia’s affairs, something he needed sometimes.

Now night had fallen: only a sullen gray light shimmered on the lake beyond the trees. Jane would have to carry out her excuse now. She would have to drive to her house and collect her makeup and her hairbrush, which would mean seeing Alan again and trying not to get into another conversation full of lies, his lies of fact and her lies of omission. Then she would have to drive back to her parents’ house and lie some more to them.

FOURTEEN

Three days later, Alan was walking slowly and painfully across campus toward the building where the annual Unger Humanities Lecture would soon be given by a famous New York critic, L. D. Zimmern. It had snowed the night before, and the frozen lawn was glazed gray-white; the sky was covered with a foggy scrim of cloud, also gray-white, in which a small flaw indicated the presence of the distant sun. Alan’s mind was also covered with foggy cloud; the only small bright spot in it was the knowledge that he would soon see Delia again. His back hurt worse than it had for weeks.