Beautiful Lies Read online

  “I’m too hot,” she announced, shading her eyes as she squinted toward the bright sun.

  “So go inside.” I stood in front of her. We wore matching swimsuits covered in pink-and-white stripes. I could already see the beginnings of a sunburn on her fair shoulders, and knew that I would have one too. We weren’t wearing sunscreen. My mother thought it was silly, that people took caution about sun exposure to such a ridiculous extent. She’d always ask, “How can something that feels so damn good possibly be bad for you?”

  Rachel peered up at me. “You come inside too.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.” When we walked past my mother, she didn’t even glance up at us. She was absorbed in her task, her fingers working the yarn with careful precision, slipping beads into place wherever she thought they belonged. She was using brown-and-yellow yarn, and as we walked by, I remember glancing down and thinking how ugly the project was, how the colors almost made me wince.

  Inside, our dad was just as distracted. He stood on the highest rung of his stepladder—the one that says THIS IS NOT A STEP—and squinted as he drew careful, light outlines of the clouds. They were big and puffy—cumulus clouds. We were studying condensation in science class, and I knew all the different formations: cirrus, stratus, altostratus, and cumulus.

  Nelly lay curled in a ball on a pile of my dad’s sketches for the mural, purring as she slept. My dad wore paint-spattered jeans and a filthy white T-shirt. He was so young—only thirty-two years old, the same age as my mom. He had a silver stud in his left ear. On his upper right arm, he had a heart tattoo with my mother’s name—Anna—on a banner going across it.

  My mother had a similar tattoo on her right shoulder blade, except it was smaller, and it said my dad’s name: Steven. Our parents had told us the story countless times. They’d met in college when they were eighteen years old. They hadn’t even shared their first kiss when, a few weeks later, they got their tattoos. When my grandmother—my mom’s mom—saw what her oldest daughter had done, she only laughed. She wasn’t upset at all. The first time she’d met my dad, she shook his hand, smiled, and said, “Welcome back to the family.” She was off her meds at the time.

  My parents got married after their junior year ended; my sister and I were born a little over six months later. They never talked about it much, but I imagine having twins must have been overwhelming at the time. My dad finished college; my mom didn’t. Even as a child, though, I remember being aware that she was the more talented one, despite her lack of a degree. She could do almost anything when it came to the visual arts: painting, sculpting, pastel drawing, pen and ink. My dad was strictly a painter, mainly with oils. He worked a day job as a high school art teacher. We were poor, but I never realized that fact when I was a kid. There were other things that never dawned on me then too—things I only understood once I grew older and got a better glimpse of how most other families function. My parents loved me and my sister, I know, but they often seemed far more absorbed in their own developments. It makes sense when you think about it; they were more or less still kids when we were born.

  “Hot enough for you girls out there?” My dad wiped his forehead with a sleeve, leaning back to look at his work. The sliding glass doors leading to the yard were still open, and I heard the hiss of my mother’s lighter as she lit a cigarette. She tossed the macramé onto the lawn and took a sip of her drink. It was her usual midafternoon cocktail: vodka and lime seltzer with plenty of ice, topped with three maraschino cherries. I remember her drinking all the time, but I don’t remember ever seeing her drunk.

  “Can I get a Popsicle?” Rachel asked.

  “Did you ask your mom?”

  “She won’t care,” I said. It was true too. My mom rarely cooked actual meals; domesticity wasn’t really her thing. Even though she didn’t have a paying job, she spent most of her time at home making art, leaving my sister and me pretty much to our own devices when we weren’t in school. By the time I was eight, I was a pro at making any number of simple dinners: grilled cheese, tabouleh, homemade hummus with pita strips and black olives. My parents were strict vegetarians; I didn’t taste meat for the first nine years of my life.

  “Tell you what.” My dad stepped down from the ladder and grinned at us. “How about we go for ice cream?”

  “Yes!” I shouted.

  “Yes!” Rachel echoed.

  “Anna?” my dad called into the yard. “I’m going to take the girls for ice cream. You coming?”

  I would replay the next words of conversation over and over again in my mind for years. If only my dad had told my sister to get a Popsicle instead. If only my mom hadn’t come with us. If only she’d been the kind of mother who kept the kitchen stocked with goodies for her kids, like ice cream. If, if, if. It can make you crazy after a while.

  My parents only had one car, an old Ford Taurus with a rusty paint job and beat-up brown cloth interior. It was so ugly that, even at age nine, my sister and I were embarrassed to give our friends rides.

  We lived in the middle of nowhere; the ice cream stand was along the side of a windy two-lane road, a good ten-minute drive from our house.

  My sister and I were buckled into the backseat. We wore jean shorts over our bathing suits and plastic flip-flops on our feet. We put our windows down halfway, which was as far as they would go, and held out our hands to feel the warm wind rushing past. My mom turned up the radio and started singing along with “Me and Bobby McGee.” A few wispy cirrus clouds hung in the late afternoon sky.

  The ice cream stand—called, appropriately enough, “Mr. Ice Cream”—was crowded on such a warm day. As we stood in line, my sister and I read the menu out loud to each other. Going for ice cream was a rare treat. Like I said, even though I wasn’t really aware of it at the time, my parents didn’t have much money. Sometimes my mom would buy plastic gallon tubs of Neapolitan from the grocery warehouse in the nearest city. Within a week, all the chocolate ice cream would get eaten, leaving two dull stripes of vanilla and strawberry that would sit in the freezer for months, until it grew freezer burned and barely edible. Eventually, my mom would scoop out what was left and put it in a bowl for our cat. Ice cream always made Nelly sick; she’d spend the next few days throwing up gross, foamy piles of pink and white all over the house.

  I think about things like that now, when I remember my mom. Why did she continue to buy Neapolitan, when she knew we only wanted chocolate? And why would she give the leftovers to Nelly, when she knew it would make her so sick? She could be careless like that. But what does it matter? She was my mother, imperfect and flighty. There was so much to love about her. She would often get up very early in the mornings, before my sister and I went to school, to put our hair into careful fishtail braids. She volunteered at the Humane Society one Sunday a month, changing kitty litter and walking dogs. She had a soft spot for the older animals and the ones with health problems, whose chances of getting adopted were low. Now and then she’d come home from the shelter in a bad mood—she’d be quiet and somber and spend more time than usual sitting on our patio, smoking cigarettes and staring at the woods like it had answers for her—and we’d know that one of the older, sicker animals had been euthanized since the last time she’d been there. She put salt on everything, even grapefruit and watermelon. She could sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in Latin—but she’d only do it once a year, on Christmas Eve.

  As we stood in line at Mr. Ice Cream, a trio of older girls approached my family. All three of them sipped from tall, sweaty plastic cups that I guessed were filled with diet soda. Teenage girls, I knew, were always watching their figures. When my mom noticed them standing only a few feet away, giggling as they watched us, she nudged my dad.

  “Hey, Mr. Foster,” one of them said, her voice high and fluttery as they came right up to us in line. I realized that she must have been one of his students. The idea that my dad was in charge of so many kids during the day always struck me as somewhat ridiculous. It was like he had an entirely different life at
work, where he had to act serious and wear clothes that weren’t covered in paint stains and be a real grown-up.

  “Hi, Claire.” My dad seemed uncomfortable. The girls looked the four of us over. The tallest one—Claire—gazed at me with her wide, blue eyes. She was skinny and big-chested, a set of car keys dangling from her right hand. As she watched me, I took a step closer to Rachel. I felt so young and immature, like such a kid compared to these almost-women.

  “Are these your daughters?” another of the three girls asked. She looked like she could be Claire’s sister. All of them looked so similar: long hair, tanned skin, tight clothes.

  Nodding, my dad reached out and took my hand. “Yep, these are the twins. This is Alice and Rachel.” He and my mom never had any trouble telling us apart.

  Claire and her friends smiled at us, but their expressions didn’t seem all that friendly. For some reason, I knew I disliked them. Who were they to approach my dad like this, in a public place? He was their teacher. We were his family. This wasn’t school. I felt like they should have left him alone. He belonged to us.

  But my mother obviously wasn’t bothered by their interest. As she tugged her hair free from its ponytail, she wiggled the fingers on her right hand in a wave. She grinned at them like they were all sharing a secret. “So,” she asked, leaning forward, “how’s Mr. Foster in class?” She slipped her arm around my dad’s waist. “Is he a meanie?”

  “Of course I am,” my dad answered. “I’m probably the meanest guy they know.” And he winked—first at my mom, then at the girls. “Right?”

  Rachel’s gaze caught mine. I knew we were both thinking exactly the same thing about these girls. Get. Lost.

  “I’m Anna Foster,” my mom said. I don’t think it occurred to her that it might be more appropriate if she introduced herself as Mrs. Foster. She smiled at the girls again, relaxed, almost bored. “I guess you probably figured that.”

  My dad rubbed his palm against his head, further messing up his hair in the process. “Good to see you, girls,” he said. “You’d better enjoy the rest of your weekend. Midterms start tomorrow.” He squeezed my hand. I watched with satisfaction as Rachel—usually so calm and sweet—shot daggers at the girls with her eyes. Go away, I thought, willing them to leave.

  “We’ve been studying all day,” Claire informed him. “Don’t worry about us.” And she gave another amused giggle. “So … are you here getting ice cream?”

  Before our dad could open his mouth, Rachel interrupted to respond. “No,” she said, sarcastic, “we’re here to go iceskating.”

  I laughed out loud, clapping a hand to my mouth.

  “Rachel!” Our dad was embarrassed. But our mom, I could tell, was suppressing a smile.

  Claire and her friends didn’t know how to respond to my sister, her young face so snide and unfriendly for what probably seemed like no reason. They lingered for a few awkward seconds before saying good-bye and heading toward the grassy lawn surrounding the ice cream stand, where they settled at a picnic table and spoke to each other in hushed voices. Occasionally, one of them would look our way while we waited in line, and they would all start laughing. At that moment, I hated them so much. They didn’t know my dad. They probably didn’t even know his first name—he was just this other person to them, this “Mr. Foster” who my sister and I were unfamiliar with. Who were they to intrude? The day felt ruined.

  Ice cream has a way of making everything better. My parents got milk shakes, and Rachel and I both got chocolate cones with rainbow sprinkles. We waited as my dad counted out exact change.

  “Should we sit down?” he asked, squinting in the direction of the picnic tables. Claire and her friends hadn’t left yet.

  My mom tugged on Rachel’s hair. “Maybe we should just go home.”

  If only we’d stayed just a few moments longer. If only we’d never run into those girls. If only we’d sat down to finish our ice cream.

  The road to our house was hilly, winding, so narrow in some parts that there was only room for one lane of cars. My mom put her bare feet on the dashboard and turned up the radio. She twisted the dial, searching for a clear signal, before stopping at “Space Oddity” by David Bowie. Her toenails were painted bright purple. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but in hindsight it seems like such a childlike, girlish color for a grown woman to choose.

  In the backseat, I glanced over at Rachel. Our car’s air conditioning didn’t work, so even with the windows down, it was warm enough that our ice cream was melting quickly. She caught a few drops on her tongue, which had turned blue from the sprinkles. When I caught her eye, I mouthed ice-skating, and we both started to laugh.

  For whatever reason, our giggles seemed to annoy my dad. “Hey,” he said, looking at us in the rearview mirror, “that’s enough.”

  We were quiet for a few seconds as we suppressed our laughter. Then, so softly that only I could hear her, Rachel whispered, ice-skating. I lost it. Instead of reprimanding us again, our dad turned up the radio. He steered the car with one hand, the other one resting on my mom’s leg, and rolled his eyes at her as he nodded at the backseat. My mom just shrugged and smiled. “Kids,” she said.

  The Taurus approached a tight, one-lane turn. We were in a small valley less than a mile before the entrance to Loyalhanna Lake. To our left, there was a steep hillside covered with trees and jutting rock formations. A sudden drop on our right led to a murky pool of still water littered with trash: a dirty mattress, a child’s plastic rocking horse, a ripped garbage bag overflowing with clothes. Broken beer bottles. Old tires.

  His hand still on her leg, I saw my father rub my mother’s calf, the gesture tender and loving. I squinted at the garbage in the crevasse beneath us and noticed graffiti on the side of a huge gray rock. In orange spray paint, someone had written: DEAR KATE, I LOVED YOU MORE. Even at age nine, I felt a pang of heartache for whoever had scrawled those words. I believed them. I thought of how impossibly romantic it was that someone, probably a heartbroken ex-boyfriend, would profess such a private pain to the whole world.

  It was a lovely day. Cirrus clouds drifted overhead like frayed cotton. The sun was beginning to descend, casting light and shadows across the wide surface of Loyalhanna Lake in the distance, beyond the trees in the valley below us.

  I looked out the windshield in time to see a flash of bright green coming around the bend in the narrow road. It was a pickup truck full of kids: three in the front, two in the bed.

  Our vehicles hit each other head-on. After the initial impact, the truck spun out and rolled down the steep hillside. I heard it even though I couldn’t see it anymore.

  The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. The Taurus came to a stop at an angle, its body completely blocking the road. That’s it, I thought to myself, it’s over. We’re okay. I felt my chest rise and fall. I stared down at my body, my arms and legs. Aside from a dull, deep pain across my torso, I was unharmed.

  I glanced over at Rachel, assuming she’d be fine, just like me. But my sister was slumped in her seat, unconscious. Her window was splintered into tiny cracks where her right side had slammed against the glass. I could tell she was breathing, obviously alive, but a dim flicker of fear began to grow in my gut as I realized that everything was not okay, that maybe something had gone very wrong.

  I looked over the edge of the road again and saw the green pickup truck resting upside down among the trash and shallow water, which rippled outward now from the impact, glinting in the sun. I saw a man in a white T-shirt lying facedown in the water, unmoving.

  The radio was still playing “Space Oddity.” What had felt like minutes had been only seconds.

  I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed toward the front to check on my parents, who were silent. My mother was gone; it was like she had disappeared, like it was all part of a nightmarish magic trick. The windshield was shattered. My father sat in the driver’s seat. If his eyes hadn’t been open, I might have thought he was only sleeping, or that he�
�d been knocked unconscious like my sister. He stared off to one side, his head tilted at an odd angle. He was completely still. His nose was bleeding, dripping onto his white shirt. One drop. Then two. Then another, like someone slowly turning the handle of a faucet, until the drips became a trickle.

  I’m not sure how anyone else might have reacted in the same situation. A small part of me understood what had happened, but it was like my mind wouldn’t allow me to fully grasp the reality. Maybe I was in shock. I didn’t cry or scream or get out of the car. I just sat back down, waiting for someone to find us. I stared at my sister, who was still unconscious, and it occurred to me that she wouldn’t remember any of this once she woke up. But I would. And in those moments as I sat in the backseat with her, I thought of the plea: I loved you more. I could see it being written; I could imagine the heartache of that boy, because my heart was breaking too.

  I pulled my legs close to my chest and rested my cheek against my knees, my head turned so I could continue to stare at Rachel. I sat there looking at my twin sister, one thought playing in my mind over and over again, long after a little red sports car happened upon the scene, after the police came with a whole slew of ambulances, after I watched them drive my parents away slowly, in no hurry at all, because there was nothing anybody could do to help them. Even that night, as I lay in bed at my grandmother’s house, I stared at the ceiling and mouthed the same phrase, until the rhythm of the words on my breath finally put me to sleep. I thought of Rachel in the next room, the fact that she hadn’t woken up until an EMT held smelling salts beneath her nose. And I repeated the words like they were a prayer: I wish I were you. I wish I were you. I wish I were you.

  And in a way, I was her. When I got up the next morning, my right side was throbbing from my head all the way down my arm; even my fingertips tingled unpleasantly. My flesh was swollen with vicious purple bruises. But my injuries weren’t from the accident—not exactly.