A Field Guide to Deception (2 page)

Raised on his knees, Simon squeezed another pool of ketchup onto his plate, and Claire, in what appeared to be a single motion, stoppered the bottle before he flooded his plate, and righted his milk before it tumbled off the table. Liv loved these moments: the constant diverting of disaster. “I don't know that word,” she admitted, dragging from her beer, “mycology. Your aunt was a doctor of some kind?”

“A mycologist studies fungi. My aunt specialized in mushrooms.” She stood abruptly, and said, “I forgot the watermelon.”

Simon ate two pieces of watermelon, and kept holding out his hands to be wiped.

“I missed the summers here,” Liv said, trying to remember the name of the pink flowering tree by the drive. Crabapple?

“Did you grow up in Spokane?” Claire asked.

“South Hill. We moved to Portland when I was in junior high.”

“I used to play on the hill. Rode my bike around Cannon Hill Park, played soccer at Manito, waded for coins in the pond at the Japanese Gardens.”

Liv nodded. “So you too?”

“My parents lived in Seattle, but I spent summers here with my aunt.”

“You were close with her.” Liv understood this was not a question, though it baffled her. Her aunts made quilts, went to craft fairs and Bible studies.

“Yes. We were close.”

Liv sipped her beer, asked, “What about Simon? Will you take him on your research trip?”

“Of course,” Claire said, “he loves camping: all those rocks to throw.”

If Claire took Simon, it would be easier to work in the kitchen, no one underfoot. Minimal cleanup. No little boy crouched over his trains, running them through the grass as Liv worked. No walks to the river with his hand in hers. No picnics on the deck.

While Claire put Simon to bed, Liv had started a fire in the ceramic backyard fireplace. Now, as Claire approached, her wine glass in one hand, and a plate of cookies in the other, she watched firelight play off Liv's skin like tongues.

Extending the plate, Claire asked, “Do you want any?”

Liv ate her cookie, periodically flicking Simon's sword against her pants' leg as though it were a riding crop. “You worked as your aunt's assistant?” Liv asked.

“That's right.”

Her assistant, yes, Claire thought. Yet that word was wholly inadequate. It didn't begin to explain this emptiness. Claire's aunt had died suddenly in January: a heart attack during her morning run. Snow on the roadside had hidden the body for hours. Claire
had driven along the road several times before she'd seen the tread of a sneaker. Simon, strapped in his car seat, pressed his boots into the back of her seat, munching on pretzels while Claire sat, willing herself to get out of the car.

“And you're finishing the book from her notes?” Liv asked.

Except that some of her notes were missing. But Claire couldn't think about that. “Yes,” she said.

“What will you do after you finish?” Liv asked.

“After I finish?” Claire drank her wine, held the deep tang a moment before swallowing.

“After you finish the book, what will you do?”

A fair question, Claire knew. The sort of question everyone asked. She'd contemplated modifying her field guides to other subjects: field guide to dynamic lunches, featuring the cheese sandwich, the peeled carrot. Especially popular with toddlers! A field guide to clearing out your dead aunt's study. Denial and procrastination will help draw this pleasure out. You can move piles from one surface to another for months, and make absolutely no headway. After fourteen years, she had come to love her work, the mapping of their discoveries had become thrilling to her. Mushrooms, for god's sake. Mushrooms had become thrilling. “I don't know,” she said. And then to deflect the issue, she added, “Maybe you'll keep giving me jobs.”

“Sure,” Liv replied. “You can be my assistant, working with you is like working with myself. I can't even tell us apart.”

Claire grinned. Visitors to the house had mistaken Liv for Claire, then asked, after the confusion was sorted, if they were sisters. And Simon, upon meeting Liv, had stared back and forth between them as though it were a wondrous magic trick.

Claire thought Liv an unusual girl, quiet like Simon, contained in her movements and watchful like the child as well. She still hadn't decided if she found their resemblance eerie, or if she were more disconcerted by the ease with which she and Liv moved around one another. The improbable simplicity of a stranger among them, in this house in particular, shielded always from external examination. Later Claire would marvel at that thought.

“How did your aunt like Simon?” Liv asked.

Claire started laughing. “You know the first thing she told me? ‘Please tell me you've scheduled an abortion.' She thought I'd gone completely mad. My entire pregnancy she grumbled at me about how I'd ruined my life. And then he was born, and she cut the cord, and held him, and never wanted to give him back.”

“And has he asked?”

Claire stared at Liv, then looked away at the hover of mosquitoes, the darkened meadow beyond them. At first, she had been afraid that Simon wouldn't remember Dee, that all of their adventures together would be lost to him, but now she was afraid that he remembered too clearly. He avoided Dee's room just as his mother did. “In his way,” Claire said, “he still asks.”

“I have a canoe—stored at a friend's,” Liv said, lighting a cigarette. “I'd like to take him out. Along the river here, or for a float on the Little Spokane.”

“Simon in a canoe.” Claire imagined his delight, his rapturous little face.

“He'll love it.”

“Yes,” she said, and then, “Could I come too?”

Liv blushed, dragged from her cigarette, nodded. Wind through the trees hushing around them. In the meadow, two deer ambled through the scrub, down to the river, pausing often, wary.

Two

The Ramones are punks

Simon woke and began running his trains along the side of his bed by the railing. Edward and Henry had slept with him, their wooden engines chipped of paint, worn down by Simon's furious love. Through the window's shade, light splintered. Simon hummed his warrior song. Engines were always going to war. Simon's engines especially.

When he finally climbed from bed, he opened the adjoining door to his mother's room and watched her sleep. Her arm tossed above her head, a furrow between her eyebrows. His mother's long, thin nose, her shiny face. Simon tossed his trains onto the bed, and climbed up beside her. Before Dee went away, he would get up in the morning and visit her room; she was always awake and propped against the pillows, her hair wild like wolf man. They would eat Cheerios with raisins, and sip warmed milk.

“Simon?” his mother asked as he scrambled over her, and slipped under the blue down comforter. She curled into him. He placed his palm against her face, covering an eye.

Then he remembered they were going sailing. Liv was taking them on the river. Simon kicked his bare feet into his mother's belly. Mashed his face against her face, his hands cupped around the back of her head.

“Simon,” she said again, and strained her neck backward.

Last night, Liv had brought him a special orange vest and let him wear it until he went to bed. It would make him float on the water just like a ship. She said he could wear it whenever they went to the river from now on. His mother had laughed.

The door from the hallway opened and Liv's dark head appeared in his mother's room. “Come on,” she whispered to him. “Don't wake your mother.”

He scurried from the bed and took Liv's proffered hand.

“Cereal?” she asked. “And milk?”

He squeezed her hand and hurried along to the kitchen with her. Liv was not Dee. But she was like Dee, even her wolf-man bed-head.

Liv let Simon carry two bottles of water. She had the cooler, packed with sandwiches and fruit, in the truck already, and towels, paddles, flotation vests, a change of clothes for Simon. Coffee, ordered from a stand, would be pure joy.

The previous evening, when Liv had stopped by for the canoe, Bailey wasn't home. Her housemate, Sophia, had let Liv into the garage and helped hoist the boat onto the roof rack. While Liv tied the boat down, Bailey drove into the driveway.

“You, my friend, have a reputation already,” Bailey said, leaning through the window. Snug against the collar of her chef's jersey, her hair wound into a bun.

Liv looked her over, secured the last knot. “How's that?”

“You've forgotten this is Spokane. Small town life is all I'm saying. Just keep that in mind, right?”

“Sure.”

“You need any more paddles?”

“No,” Liv said, “I'm golden. Thanks.”

“Yeah. Have fun.” She reversed to let Liv through. Hollered after her, “Don't fall in.”

If Claire weren't up soon, she'd have to let Simon back in to wake her; Simon had mastered the wickedly effective pounce/ululation combo—as she herself could attest. Each time she'd been stalked and shrieked awake, she regretted teaching him to open the latch to her trailer. He hugged the water bottles to his chest, then solemnly handed them over when she asked. He was already wearing his life
vest.

“I'm sorry to be so late,” Claire said behind them.

Liv jumped, dropped the bottles, Simon giggling.

“Sorry,” Claire said again. “Usually Simon wakes me at dawn. I brought your monkey hat.” This last to Simon as she pressed the hat over his untidy hair.

Claire wore short black trunks and a red camisole. Her brown eyes looked larger in the morning like a marmoset's. They latched Simon's car seat into the truck. When Claire squeezed between them, her thigh pressed against Liv's. In a moment, the engine roared, sputtered, and died. Liv pumped the gas pedal, turned the engine over.

“Your stereo,” Claire said, tucking some of the wires back into the cracked console, “is supposed to go here.”

“We'll just have to sing instead,” Liv said as the truck roared, vibrating so hard that the windows rattled as she reversed down the gravel lane. “Know any Ramones?”

“ ‘I Wanna be Sedated'would certainly be fitting. Or we could just shout at one another.”

“Like a proper family outing. Now you're talking. Say you want coffee,” Liv said, her mouth nearly against Claire's ear as the truck shifted them.

“Yes,” Claire said over the tumult. “Oh god, yes.”

They slid the green canoe into the water. Liv held the rope and dragged the boat back toward shore. Hopping from foot to foot, Simon looked apprehensive, swallowed by his orange vest and Capri-length swim trunks. His mouth O-shaped.

“You're in first,” Liv told Claire. “I'll hand Simon to you.”