"What Truth Lies"

[zesty_pinto]

            Angela called me while I was in a meeting, so she ended up catching my cellphone’s voice mail.  I would have never realized that she was going to call me after all this time.  Personally, I thought she hated me.  When I listened to her voice in the voice mailbox, I should have known that I was right to some extent.
            “Hi Steve, I guess you are busy.  I know you don’t want to talk to me but it’s important so call me when you get back.  Ed was curious about his father and wanted to talk to you.”
            I felt like she had to add that last bit as if to say she didn’t even care about me and frankly wouldn’t no matter how long it’s better.  Picking up my cell, I redialed.  In a half-ring I caught her voice and the curious “Hello?” that she would say as if she was unsure I was friend or foe. 
            “It’s me Angela.”
            “Oh.” There was a brief pause. “You know, you didn’t have to call…”
            “It was the right thing to do.  I’m sorry about the delay.”
            “It’s all right…” I could hear disappointment in her voice “Want to talk to Ed?”
            “Yeah.”  I lied.  I really missed hearing that beautiful voice.
 
            I should have said something other than goodbye.
 
            I guess you couldn’t really start here but it was the first thing that came to mind.  I met Angela during my MBA days back in Boston.  I was on the way to the Red Line in Downtown Crossing.  Of course, transferring from train to train meant having those times when I would be running out of the doors of one of them just to catch the other train just as it was getting ready to run out.  What made it so hard was trying to catch it with a satchel of two ten pound law texts and three legal pads, and another one of those heavy clothbound books clung to your elbows.  I guess I should have been glad enough that I didn’t attempt this during rush hour, but at least rush hour guaranteed that I wouldn’t be waiting twelve to fifteen minutes for another train to come my way.  I ended up chasing after a door until I realized it was about to close.  I mean, I would have stopped myself, but I was so busy thinking that I could make it that I didn’t notice that someone else was running in my way as well.
            What happened was something you’d expect right out of a bad romance novel.  I ended up bumping headlong into her shoulder and I felt something knock one of my ten pound books, forcing it to slide out of my arm and thumping hard into the concrete floor.  I was busy trying to stop my body from spinning around but failed and saw myself fall back-first to the ground.  I ended up slamming my palms into the concrete after my satchel found its home right below where I fell.  The pain that I felt was almost crippling, but it didn’t feel bad until that brief second when I felt that other person fall right across from me.  I apologized, she apologized, and just to be nice I helped carry her stuff with mine to her dormitory on the complete opposite direction of the line I was taking.  She asked me if it was along my way and I lied to make sure that she would not feel bad.
            From that point on, I guess I saw something in her that I knew was a little different from the other people I met.  She was shy, reserved at first.  I guess I looked kind of nonthreatening too since I was usually slumping from all the stuff I carried.   Before I let her carry her stuff into her dorm and ask her again if she was okay, she smiled at me and said good-bye.  It was not long before I realized that she took the same route I did and we ended up greeting each other, talking with each other, and eventually meeting each other.
            Angela studied theatre arts in a graduate program and worked in some local productions on the side, which was why she was running around so much.  I didn’t have any excuse like that; I ran around because there was a library that I felt really comfortable in that usually stocked the documents I needed to read.  She was curious about my life all the same and eventually, just as I attended a few of her productions, so did she visit that place I spent time ruminating over old books.
            “I can see why you like this place,” she said to me while we sat beside some couches “This is a peaceful little place.”  I hated bringing her there since it was so boring compared to her life, but she insisted.
            “It’s a nice little place to think.” I lied.  The reason I ran from place to place with books was because I found it difficult to study here.
            “What do you think about?” She said it with an amusing little smile and looked at me often curious about what went on in my mind.
            “Oh, many things.”
            “Anything worth telling me?”  She said with a smile.
            “Well… I don’t know.  What do you think?”
She gave me a perfectly white grin and kissed me on the cheek for the first time we had met.  It was the first time I realized that we had been dating.
            In a year she finished her Masters but decided to become a model.  She moved to a place close to the library.  A year after that, I finished.  I celebrated with her, my parents, and my younger brother Smitt by going out to dinner.  My father kept wanting to pay for the wine, and my mother often looked at her and me with a sort of quiet smile.  Smitt kept trying to crack a joke as he always did and I smiled as always.  After the family went their ways and given their thanks, I spent the night with her along the quiet of some children’s park not that far off from the Alewife stop at the end of the Red line.  We stared up and talked to each other about everything.  At one point I told her about how nervous I always felt talking to her at times, she looked at me as though upset.
            “I’m sorry,” she would say.
            “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I said with a smile “I just never feel like I can say enough that would be right.  I should be the one saying sorry.”
            She shook her head then “You haven’t said anything wrong…  I doubt you ever will.” She reached close to kiss me and we spent the rest of the night together.
            I soon moved in with her, making sure that I did not mess up anything that she had there so that she would not feel overcome with the transition.  I was worried about it because of the way she had been acting afterwards soon after I moved in.  Sometimes she would ask me if I was satisfied with this relationship, or if I had met anyone new these days. 
I quickly found a position with a blue chip company.  The pay was enough to pay for any expenses she might have had as well as guarantee that I could make sure she was more comfortable.  It worried me that I would trouble her so much.  She sometimes would talk with me on the cellphone from the metro to work.  Sometimes it ran through lunch or during the later hours of the day.  I felt like she was saying I was not being good enough, so I usually worked later hours just to make sure that I could do better for her.
Unfortunately, that was when the confusion started to come around.  She would often ask me if there was a special reason why I kept away from her so much, or if I made any special friends while I was at work.  I never understood what was wrong with what I was doing.  Perhaps I was just not doing enough to make her happy, and during those nights when I’d come home late just to see her sleeping close to a wet pillow, I’d sleep on the couch with the worry that I was not being that right man for her.
On our anniversary I bought her a golden Tourneau watch that I felt looked right with her.  She had set up a candlelight dinner and even told me that she had turned down a shoot in Jamaica to make sure she was with me.  I looked down at the beautiful meal she made.
“I’m sorry…” I said.
“Sorry for what?” She replied with a blink.
“It’s nothing.” I lied because I didn’t want to tell her how I felt like I was disappointing her, that I was working for her but apparently was not working enough if she would push away things like this for me.  This upset her though.
“No, tell me.”
“It’s okay, I’m just worried.”
“If there’s something you need to tell me, just say it.”
“I… it wouldn’t feel right.”
She dropped the watch.
“I knew it.”
I looked down.  I could already begin to hear her voice squeaking with tears.
“When did this start?”
“Ever since I moved in.”
“So I’m not good enough for you?” Her voice quaked.
“It wasn’t that, it was just that I never felt good enough for you.”
“You never felt good enough for me so that was why you would spend all this time away?”
I couldn’t say anything, I just stared at the food that grew cold as I kept fixing my eyes towards it.
“Who’s her name?”
I did not expect her to ask for a name.
“A name?”
“Don’t play dumb now, if you’re fucking someone else then I want to know who it is.”
I looked up at her and I could see her face already turn into a mixed expression of sadness and anger.
“I haven’t been doing that sort of thing?”
“Oh, so it’s been a flirting thing then?  You and her and maybe some kisses in the office?”
“It wasn’t even that.”
“Then what the fuck was it?”
“It’s…  It isn’t a person, it’s-“
At that point her hand slammed on the table.
“Don’t try to hide it now!”  I can remember seeing so many tears run down her face “Why else would you be away so often?  What happened to commitment?”
“But…”
“Why the fuck did you do it?”
I sighed and looked down.
“…I did it because I felt like I couldn’t keep up with you.”  I don’t know what was more painful about that moment, that I was telling the truth or that it only helped fuel the lie.
She sobbed the night through.  I slowly got up and walked out.
“Goodbye,” I said as I tried to hold back my own regret.
            That night I slept in a hotel room that looked out into the skyline of the city.  It felt like I was still in the office.  The morning later I received a call from her.
            “I’m three months pregnant.  What am I supposed to do?”
            “I’ll take care of you until then.”
            “Don’t bother if you’re busy with some other woman.  I should just kill myself.”
“No, don’t do that.”
“Why shouldn’t I?  I wasted all this time for nothing.”
She was still bitter.  I understood as I listened to her explain how much she was sacrificing for me.  I sat down and apologized whenever she had the heart to listen.  A week later, I moved my things away as she cried, trying to tell me she was sorry.  I told her that I was too and promised to make sure that I paid for the child’s education.  She
            Six months later she gave birth to Ed and I was treated to a photo of the boy.  I could see her photo in the background next to some of her friends.  It was a smile I knew too well, a fake one. 
 
            “Hey Ed.”
            “Are you my daddy?” he spoke through the receiver.
            “Yeah, hi there Ed.  Your mommy’s been telling me you’re growing up into quite a boy.”
“Mommy says I’m going to grow up into someone strong and handsome!”
            “Wow, you’re really growing up.” I gave a short laugh “Is mommy okay these days?”
            “She’s fine.  She says I’m going to be in commercials!”
            “Yeah?  Just like your mommy?”
            “Uh huh.”
            “You’ll probably do great.  Tell her you love her for me, okay?”
            “Okay.  Are they good?”
            I paused “What?”
            “Mommy says that you had to go away because of someone.  Are they good?”
            After those years I was never able to look at another woman again.  I spent my time wondering if I had done the right thing.  Perhaps my problem back then was because I was too afraid to ask what I was doing wrong, or because I had not taken antidepressants and seen a therapist back then like I did now.  Perhaps there was a second chance if I could explain myself to her about what I did wrong and begged for forgiveness.  But if it was so long, she probably found another person to love, another person to bring meaning to her life.  I could not cause her that pain again.  Not after all that had happened.
            “Yeah…  they’re good.”

 

I was supposed to write about a controversy or hypocrisy in a family from a point of view of a subjective narrator.  I guess two out of three ain't bad, but it certainly could be a lot better.  Oh well, I guess it's acceptable for now.