The Truth Is a Theory Read online

  It’s remarkable how a tragedy can alter not only someone’s state of mind, but also their general appearance. In pictures of my father before Eva left, what’s most notable is his comfort, his easy smile; he’s ripe, puffed up. In the pictures of him after, he’s puckered, shriveled, a peach left on the counter too long. His strong Italian nose and thick eyebrows jut out from his hollowed face, and his shoulders are hunched—I think of him shuffling along, although I don’t know if he really shuffled. He just radiated defeat, like George Bailey when The Building and Loan collapsed.

  I own one black-and-white picture of my mother. She was captured as she was turning towards the camera, as if someone had just called her name and pressed the shutter, afraid of missing the shot, of missing her. The pivot, or perhaps the breeze, has swirled her long, dark hair around her pretty face, her full lips. But it is her eyes that are the picture. They are bottomless. You can see all the way into her soul, all the way down into naked sorrow. It is painful to look at, yet I can’t look away. It feels like walking in on someone crying in a corner and you don’t know whether to tiptoe out or move closer.

  But maybe I’m the one who’s injecting the sorrow into the black and white. Maybe the way I see my parents is the way I want to see them, the way I need to see them. It’s my version of the truth, and I use my pictures and memories as evidence of that truth. Photographs are two-dimensional; they can’t describe the complexity of the person or situation behind the image, and so they beg imaginative context. Photographs—and life—are a Rorschach test; everyone sees different meanings hidden among its simple lines.

  We are the photographers of our own history. In the moment, as we experience something, we are manipulating the shot and the characters with angle, exposure, and shutter speed. The person next to us is doing the same, with their own lens.

  So is there ever just one truth? Or is it just the truth according to me, according to you, according to that person over there? Do we each just hold our own piece of the whole picture, our own piece of the truth?

  March 1993

  Boston, MA

  The kitchenette was a disaster. Dirty pots and bowls were teetering on the counters like a city of Jenga towers; topless jars from cupboards and a big mixer with chocolate batter dripping from its silver blade fought over any remaining counter space. Allie was singing and dancing her way through a cake recipe while the radio tried to keep her in tune and on tempo. Dana had called earlier to say he had news. She wondered if it was a job offer, and she hoped, and tried not to hope, for New York.

  She slid the cake in the oven, and closed the heavy oven door with her hip, in time with the song’s last drumbeat. She didn’t hear Dana come into the apartment—the music was too loud—but the air shifted around her, and it wasn’t into low grade where it often slipped when Dana dragged in from his day, it sprang right into fifth gear. She wiped her hands on her favorite jeans and pranced out to meet him. “Hi honey!” She greeted him with the same ebullience every night, dropping whatever she was doing to wrap her arms around him.

  He always kissed her, a good kiss. His lips wore the weather from the streets of Boston; tonight they were cool, wet with rain. The pressure of his kiss usually expressed gratitude; it made her feel that her smiling energy at the door each day was important. Tonight though, there was playfulness on his lips, the quiver of a surprise.

  “How was your day?” he said. He was holding something behind his back.

  Usually her first words would unroll slowly and reach out for him as he trudged down the hall and into the closet-sized room they had made into his office. She would wait in the hall and listen to his heavy books thump down onto his desk while her words, the answer to his question about her day, hovered briefly in the space between them and then quietly wafted to the floor like bits of ash. Once in a while, he reappeared and they would open a bottle of wine, but most often he would be lost to her for the night, absorbed in text, his face a frown of concentration, his finger tucked under a page. She would swallow down the rest of her words and slip silently into the kitchen for yogurt, a box of Grape Nuts, and the clicker.

  Tonight however, he stood and waited for the whole answer.

  She smiled and tucked a stray strand of hair back into her ponytail. “I was busy.”

  He wiped some flour off of her face and glanced into the war zone behind her. “I can see that. What’s cooking?”

  “Chicken with lemons and olives, but screw the meal. The news, what’s the news?” Allie danced around him and tried to peek at what he was holding.

  “Not so fast.” His smile stretched past his ears; his excitement was static electricity all around him. “This is a big moment. And it definitely calls for…” He pulled a green bottle from behind his back.

  “Champagne!” She clapped her hands.

  Dana started towards the kitchen. “I’m going in for a dishtowel. If I don’t reappear in five minutes, call 911.”

  Allie laughed; Dana’s mood made her want to swing from the light fixtures. “I can find it.” She smiled at the exaggerated doubt on his face and pulled a towel out of a drawer. “See, there’s a method to my madness.”

  “Ah, so that’s it.” Dana draped the towel over the bottle and popped the cork. He poured the glittering liquid into two juice glasses. “Well, there’s no method to mine, and I’m too lazy to find champagne glasses.” He handed her a short glass.

  “You could pour it straight into my mouth for all I care.” Allie trailed him into the living room. “So, tell me.”

  Dana sat down on the couch with a sigh. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, after all the painting and curtaining you’ve done to this apartment. But we’re going to have to move.” He paused for effect. “To New York.”

  Allie squealed and jumped into Dana’s lap. “Crabtree Taylor Drake?”

  Dana confirmed with a proud nod.

  “Congratulations.” She hugged him.

  “Thanks.” He raised his glass to her and then paused before taking a sip. “And really, thanks for this year. You’ve put your life on hold for me for nine months. I know it hasn’t been easy.”

  She slid off his lap and clicked her glass against his. “Anytime.”

  She had been duly warned; before they were married Dana had tried to prepare her for his grueling last year in law school. “I’ve been lucky, I’ve been able to hide a major character flaw from you all these years,” he had said to her a year ago over dinner.

  She tilted her head.

  “It actually hasn’t been a flaw yet, but I’ve never been married before, and I don’t think Neal really cared.” He smiled. “I get lost in my work. I mean, truly lost. You know how some people can breeze through homework by doing the bare minimum? I’m not one of those people. You know me, I can’t do something half-assed, I’m compulsive that way. It’s all or nothing. Which is a good thing; if I do well this year, it’ll be great for us.” He leaned forward. “And I promise to try to skim a chapter or scribble an essay, but I have a feeling I’ll sneak back in the middle of the night to redo it.”

  She had shrugged his worry away. “I’ve always wondered why you and Megan didn’t fall for each other.”

  “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She threw her napkin at him.

  She had never complained; she was proud of that. She didn’t want to be a burden, and he wouldn’t know what to do about it anyway. She’d been lonely before, she could handle it. She didn’t complain to her friends either, who were all having the time of their lives in Manhattan. The young marriage, the move to a new city, this was the life she chose; bemoaning it felt like admitting to a fatal error in judgment. Allie was afraid she’d hear a nasal “I told you so” if she started to tell it like it was. So she rarely did.

  Instead she had tried her best to keep busy, silencing her loneliness and wriggling doubts with a ste
ely, I am not my mother, and throwing herself into a project, any project. The apartment was her first, and with the music and daytime TV for company, she repainted and re-outfitted their small living space in outrageous colors that made Dana raise his eyebrows. When there wasn’t a corner left to enhance, she traded in her House Beautiful magazines for Gourmet and cooked her way through roast duck and homemade sourdough bread and five-layered flourless cakes. Then she joined a gym (to work off all the food); strolled her way around all the side streets of Boston; thought about training for the Boston Marathon; researched getting a puppy (but settled on Harold the fish); and although Dana’s trust fund made it so that she didn’t have to work, found a job at a funky clothing boutique—Anastasia’s—where she befriended the owner and namesake of the shop, and spent her earnings on clothes.

  “So now it’s your turn.” Dana settled back into the couch cushions with his champagne and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “What do you want to talk about, think about? Your job? Where to live? When to call the girls?” He smiled.

  “A job. That’s a buzz kill.” She held up her hand. “Not for you I know.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I just can’t seem to settle on anything. Almost everything sounds interesting, exciting even, like, I can do that! And then when I need to commit, I get twitchy.” She half-smiled. “So instead I throw a party.”

  They had hosted a few wild parties over the year for Dana’s law school friends. Allie always insisted on theme——a black tie New Year’s Eve, a Valentine’s red cocktail competition. Her favorite had been the Halloween party. They’d turned the apartment into a haunted house, and guests had gone all out with masks, makeup, and colorful costumes. Allie had dressed as a flapper in a dazzling silver dress; Dana was a lifeguard.

  In terms of a career however, Allie felt like the last person at the party, standing alone among the drooping crepe paper and half-empty plastic cups.

  Dana peered into her eyes. “You’d be good at anything you put your mind to.”

  “But there isn’t something that’s pulling at me, that’s wrapping its arms around me and saying this.” Allie reached for her champagne glass. “Let’s talk about where we’re going to live.”

  “Okay. East side? West side?”

  “Or the suburbs.”

  Dana’s glass stopped moving halfway up to his lips, and he cocked his head. “The quiet suburbs doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I know. I love the city,” Allie said, “but I figure we’ll be in there a ton anyway. I was thinking maybe a cute little house with a lot of potential, so that we can fix it up, make it ours.”

  Dana raised his glass the rest of the way up to his lips and sipped thoughtfully.

  Allie bounced once on the couch with her growing excitement. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a place all our own, something permanent?”

  He smiled at her. “It would be great.”

  “Really? But it has to need work. Moving into a primped and perfect house wouldn’t feel like us. Everything would be just an inch out of place, just a color shade off. Maybe not enough to change it, but enough so that it just wouldn’t feel right. We’d be intruding on someone else’s dream.” Allie paused. “Or nightmare.” She coiled the thick rope of her ponytail around her fist. “I wonder if whoever moved into my old house feels the emptiness seeping out of the walls?”

  Dana put his glass down and wrapped his arm around her. “Maybe houses are like seashells. Maybe once a family moves out, they take their memories with them, leaving only the shell, rinsed out and waiting for someone new.”

  “Maybe. But I still want to wipe ours clean, tear down a few walls, put up new ones, paint.”

  “Okay, Martha Stewart. Just promise no orange this time.”

  Allie’s eyes twinkled. “And what size should our shell be? I mean, how many of us sea creatures are going to be living in this shell?”

  “Unless I don’t know something,” Dana moved back a bit to take a better look at Allie, “I guess two to start.”

  “Don’t worry, one headline for today is enough. I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be nice? Starting our family, having a baby?” Even as the words were coming out of her mouth, a part of her was thinking, What? This was not something she’d been consciously considering. But just now, in the arms of Dana’s tenderness, the discussion, the idea, felt safe. And the minute the words floated between them, she sat up straight. Yes. This is what I want. And something that had always felt like quicksand was suddenly solid. A family, a baby.

  Dana pulled her in close and whispered in her ear. “It would be nice.”

  She cuddled into him and he kissed her. I can be a good mother; I want to be a good mother.

  “So, how many babies are we talking here?” Dana said.

  “Most people start with one.”

  Dana laughed. “But then, more than one, right? But less than five. What do you think?”

  “I’m actually more interested in when right now.” She reached over and pulled at his belt.

  He mock-eyeballed his watch while a smile teased at the edges of his lips. “Definitely not right now. I’ve got one last paper to write.” He started to get up off the couch.

  “Not so fast.” Allie grinned, grabbing the back of his belt and pulling him down. “You’ll just have to tell your professor you got waylaid.”

  “Waylaid, huh?” Dana started to kiss her neck, her lips as he eased her back on the couch. “That’s a lot better than the dog ate my homework.”

  ————

  The tiny white house was so similar to the one in her daydreams that her mouth hung open as they drove up the potholed driveway. Allie tried to tune out the chatty realtor as she breathed in the details. Hunter-green shutters, a wide front porch, even a white picket fence. Granted much of the paint had peeled off, and the gate looked broken, but it was a white picket fence nonetheless, and it encircled a decent-size yard. Grass seed, weed killer… a list was already forming in her mind. She couldn’t wait to get inside.

  Dana smiled, then mouthed stop smiling. He tilted his head in the direction of the realtor.

  But it was hard to lid her enthusiasm. Walking through the quaint two-bedroom cape only confirmed that this was it, a fact that seemed to be sending the realtor into overdrive. The upstairs was small, with one pink-tiled bathroom sandwiched in between the two flowery wallpapered bedrooms; Allie was already retiling and picking paint colors. But the four downstairs rooms and half-bath were all spacious, certainly big enough for the two of them and the small amount of Ikea furniture they owned. The tile was chipped in the old bathroom, and the kitchen was sagging and neglected. Perfect. The dream shimmered at her fingertips, something all her own, their own. Not just a house, but a home.

  41 Juniper Lane. It was musical. She silently thanked the Sextons once again for the down payment; a most extravagant wedding present. She and Dana had squirreled it away until he finished law school and his job dictated where they would settle.

  They called the realtor that night with a bid.

  ————

  At the end of the summer, after all the paperwork had been signed, sealed, and delivered, the house was theirs—had been theirs for three days—and they were living among the ruins of partially unpacked boxes, arbitrary piles of their life, and mountains of balled-up packing paper. It didn’t matter to Allie. Nothing could rock her euphoria, not even the sweltering August heat, the sweat dripping off her, or her sore and grimy knees. She wiped her forehead with the bottom of her shirt and surveyed her kitchen. It winked back at her. She had spent the better part of the day on all fours scrubbing the layers of dirt and grease from the floor and cabinets, and she was proud of the transformation. The worn linoleum now had a new luster; the cabinets, a brighter face.

  The round wall clock, which right now was propped up on the counter, clicked loudly as its shiny black plastic hand move
d to the top of the hour, prompting Allie up the stairs and into the shower. Dana would be home from his golf game soon, and she wanted to surprise him with a nice dinner. A thrill surged through her as she thought about tonight. She wanted it to be perfect.

  After drying off with a thick, monogrammed towel—one of the many wedding presents that were now scattered around the house, finally in use—she stepped into a pair of linen shorts that hugged her perfectly and pulled on a white camisole and a white lace tee. She had thought long and hard about what to wear tonight, and had almost called Anastasia to send some ethereal white sundress from the store, but reconsidered when she pictured Anastasia’s amusement at her desire to make this a Kodak moment. In the end, she decided to dig through her closet.

  She wiped the foggy mirror with her hand—remembering too late that this huge smudge across the mirror was a pet peeve of Dana’s—and left her hair to air dry. She brushed on a little mascara and blush and appraised herself, analyzing first her front, and then turning sideways to check out the view from the back. It won’t be too long before I have to say goodbye to these shorts. She placed her hand on her flat stomach.

  She came down the stairs slowly, her damp bare feet silent on the worn hardwood steps. Following the sounds from the kitchen—backdoor slamming, footsteps clomping, a box being pushed out of the way—she tiptoed up to her husband.

  “Hey.” He kissed her, did a double take. “You smell nice.”

  It was so refreshing to see his smile without the usual tension etched across his forehead, and she thought again that this summer reprieve in between school and the start of his first job had been healthy for both of them, and for their marriage. Dana had been so present, so unhurried. She felt safe, loved; even though she knew it was just the calm before the next storm of life.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t return the compliment. You’re soaked with sweat!”