The Lie That Matters (fiction)

“Lisa,” she lied.

The man didn’t laugh so much as he grunted and took a rocking step back. He muttered something no human could understand which she interpreted as, “That’s my favorite name.” She smiled warmly. It was the least she could do. The man was missing a few teeth and in need of cleansing, this was apparent, but otherwise, he seemed kind. Almost like the sort of guy she’d like, honestly, genuinely, if she wasn’t meeting him for the first time on the worst day of her life.

But that, too, was a lie. No, an exaggeration. It was the worst day of her life because she could think of nothing worse than the terrific awfulness of what had happened before she’d dodged down the winded steps of the Copley T station, inbound trains only, away from the badness; but she could think of worse things. She knew they were coming. Worse than this man, covered in heart-tugging black fur that she supposed was hair, she presumed he was a mammal, like she was, this man standing far too close in terms of American social standards, not drunk or stoned or otherwise altered, so far as she could tell, just a man being overly friendly, forcing her to lie once more, but an innocent lie this time. This lie wasn’t hurting anyone. This lie was safe.

“I have a donkey and a horse,” the man said. He was rolling the palms of his feet to the side, resting his ankles on the ground in a very uncomfortable-looking position. Even the man appeared uncomfortable through his smiles and strange acrobatics. She stared at him for a moment, the same smile she’d offered with her false name still lingering on her plastic face, plastic because she worked in customer service and knew how to smile to the general public. She could pretend this man was her customer at Barnes and Nobles, just a guy who wanted to know where he could find some Flannery O’Connor or books on wicca. She could pretend; she’d had practice. But now, she couldn’t even respond to the man, this proximate man whose breath smelled like tomato soup and lemonade, this man with blackend teeth and striking green eyes. She remained motionless, uncertain. The man didn’t seem to care. He was asking her where she was from. She wasn’t responding. She was thinking about the lie.

She was thinking about the lies that matter. Like, when she was in grade school and her mother told her the bus driver used to be an FBI agent or her elderly babysitter was a personal friend of Stevie Wonder. Those lies, those lies were innocent. They didn’t matter. They were spun out of faithfulness, derived from honesty. The faithful, honest attempt of a mother to soothe her overly practical daughter into believing life could be extraordinary. Or when her second boyfriend, a stunning peacock of a boy named Jeremy Winthrop, cool blonde hair, half-lidded blue eyes, faintly stubbled chin, all of nineteen years old, had told her that hadn’t forced her to have sex on her parent’s couch the day after Thanksgiving the year she turned seventeen, that she’d wanted it, wanted to feel his dick inside of her, wanted to lose the stain of virginity. Then again, maybe that lie wasn’t so much derived out of honesty and faithfulness as it was out of a need to believe it was honest or faithful. She could appreciate a good lie for a good cause. She thanked God every day for the good lies.

The man was speaking to her again, but she wasn’t listening. By the time she realized he was still focused on her, he was nearly screaming, “LISA!” And she remembered that’s who she said she was, thought maybe it might be a good plan to be this Lisa for the rest of the day, and fluttered her Lisa-like eyebrows at the man. No, she had never run in a marathon, but, boy, does she find it witty that, while throngs of crazed runners battle up Heartbreak Hill, he will only be running from the bedroom to the kitchen for more beer and Milano cookies, and, yes, she was naturally blonde, and yes, she tried to work out regularly. Being Lisa felt good to her, like she was somehow reborn into innocence, like she was herself again. She wanted to thank the man, but she didn’t. It wasn’t Lisa’s style, so much as it was her own.

As the man told her a story about when he was a boy, growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, she slipped back into neutral, plastic grin and all, and her mind drifted back up the stairs, back up to the trouble. There had to be trouble, of course, or else why would she feel such a need to trade places with Lisa, her invention? Yes, there was trouble, of the worst kind. She wondered if Lisa smoked pot; she kind of wanted to, but only if her new alter-ego was cool with it. But then she decided that numbness only prologned things. The lie was what was at stake for her now. This was a lie that mattered.

“How do you feel about dog racing?” the man asked. She said she thought it was barbaric; that was one thing she and Lisa most definitely agreed on. “How do you feel about lying?” she asked him, and he shuffled back a step. “Well,” he said slowly. “Sometimes a rat will eat soup.” She stared at him, stared at the narrow spark in his eyes, and heard his howling laughter fill the station, the underground cavern where they waited in vain for the train, where was that train, and he repeated his nonesense response. She told him quite sincerely that she couldn’t agree more, folded her arms across her chest, and wondered if he believed her name was Lisa. She wondered if it mattered. She wondered why she’d lied at all, she’d probably never see this man again after today. But she knew why she’d done it--lies felt good to her today. Better than ever.

She’d had a bad day and this man, this forever-chattering man, wasn’t making it any better. She closed her eyes as if that would help, but when she opened them again, he was still there, still standing too close, with his bohemian black hair and his sour breath. She was tired. She needed to get away.

Her boyfriend, for lack of a better term, asked her to leave Boston for the week to travel to New Hampshire with him to visit his brother. She’d said no, sighted work, and didn’t answer his calls for three days. He wanted too much from her, had said he loved her too fast, and she was wary of him. As much as she needed a break, as much as she’d wanted to avoid the day she’d just had, a day she knew was coming far in advance, she turned him down because he wasn’t a worthy alternative. He was too old for her, taxing almost ten additional years onto her own, and too grounded and too ready for permanence. Also, he was too short. Besides, she wanted nothing permanent. She was looking for Now, not for Ever.

“Amen,” the man said, and she wondered if she’d spoken outloud. It didn’t matter. She was stuck waiting for the train, the same as he was. It was OK if he knew. It was OK if he didn’t. She cocked her head to the side and thought about telling the man the truth.

But she didn’t. Instead, she thought about the lie, that terrible lie, that awful lie that had spun her out of her karmic balance and jettisoned her into personal power failure. She also thought about how her feet hurt and how she wished she was speaking to her boyfriend so he could sidle over to her apartment and treat her feet like his own mama. Her mind was drowning in the lie.

At that moment, the train arrived, and the man heaved one last mildewed breath at her as he said, “Stay beautiful, Lisa. It’s not easy,” and leapt onto the train. But she didn’t follow him. She sat on the bench and watched the train pull away, watched her latest lie vanish into the tunnel of darkness on the lips of a man she’d just met.