Page 61 of The Good Guy on My Porch

“But I already told you I lied to you.”

He shrugged. “I’m sure you have a good reason. You can deny it all you want, but I know you, Dilly. You aren’t a bad person.”

I figured I should eat before I disabused him of that notion, so I twirled some spaghetti on my fork and dug in. Oscar talked about his day while we ate. He also told me about Molly and how into the baby she was getting. She was a grade-A overachiever and already had the baby’s room set up and decorated. All that and she was planning a wedding. I’d hate her a little bit if I didn’t know what a nice person she was.

After we’d eaten, I helped Oscar clean up. With food in my belly, I was feeling much better, though I was dreading the talk we were about to have. No matter what he said, I didn’t see how he could forgive me. And I couldn’t lie to him anymore.

I took his hand and led him to the couch, enjoying the feel of his warm palm against mine for what I was sure would be the last time.

“I made up Jerome to cover up the fact that my mother needs me to call and check in with her at least five times a day. No one…No one in town knows my mother is ill, and I can’t let them find out, she wouldn’t want it.”

He stared at me, shock obvious. He reached for me, shook his head, looked at the ceiling and then back at me. “You’ve been single this entire time?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But, if it makes you feel any better, I lie to everyone. I lie all the time.”

“You’re a pathological liar?” Now he was leaning away, his expression closing down.

“No. Absolutely not. At least, I don’t think so. I only lie to keep my mother’s secret. To protect everyone else from my sad story, you know?”

“Protect everyone else?”

“Sure,” I said. “Everyone else has their own issues to deal with, their own problems. I’m a good friend by supporting them, by not bringing them down with my problems.”

“So, you don’t talk to anyone about your mother? You’ve never talked to anyone about her…What exactly is her illness?”

“Anxiety, paranoia, depression. She’s been diagnosed with them all, but she won’t take the medications…She hasn’t found any that are right for her.”

He stepped toward me and the heavy weight on my chest, the weight that swore I’d lose him by telling him the truth, lightened a bit. “Do you think you could tell me more about her? About why you’ve had to lie?”

“I’m not sure where I should start.”

“Just start at the beginning. Was your mother always ill?”

“No. I mean, she was always a bit of a worrier, like any mother, I would think. But she was a fun, vivacious person. She was always singing and dancing around the house. She had a good job and was friends with everyone. She adored my father and he adored her. They were both dedicated to their jobs and loved to socialize and have people over, but they always made time for each other. They laughed together, so much.” I sighed, my throat tightening. I missed my mother so much. Of course, I missed my father, too, but there was something worse about the way I missed my mother. My father was frozen in time, a happy, loving man. My mother, the woman she’d been, had been destroyed, had been razed down to nothing but abject misery. And I missed the person she’d been, wished there was something I could do to help her become that person again. “When I was twelve, my father was killed in a freak accident. He was a construction foreman, and he fell at work. I’ve never been sure why he was on that roof in the first place, but my aunt, his sister, says he enjoyed the hands-on, labor intensive aspect of his job. Even as foreman, he’d lend a hand when necessary. The fall wasn’t even that far, just one story, but he happened to land…” I shook my head, shaking off the memory. “He died and my mother…She was heartbroken. She and I, we locked ourselves away for a couple weeks and mourned him, but then we got back to living. Mom was so determined that we’d live the life my father would have wanted for us.”

“But that didn’t last.”

“She blamed herself for my father’s death. She’d had a bad feeling that morning when he’d left for work. She thought if she’d told him about it, he would have stayed home, and he’d still be alive. She went back to work, but slowly she stopped accepting invitations to parties, stopped inviting people over. It was so gradual, I don’t think her friends even really noticed. At least, when she stopped going anywhere but to work two years later, no one knocked on her door to check on her. It was like they’d forgotten about her.”

“They must not have been very good friends.”

I nodded. “That’s what my aunt thinks. I mean, I was just a kid, but my aunt was friends with my mom. She thinks my mom never really got close to anyone.”

“And when you’re lying to everyone around you, you can’t really be friends with anyone.”

His words made me flinch, but I didn’t see censure in his expression, just calm compassion. “You can be a good friend to other people, even if they don’t know all your secrets.”

“You can be a good friend to them, but they can’t be a good friend to you, can’t really be there for you when you need them.”

I ignored him and went on with my story. “When I was fourteen, Mom turned her paranoia and anxiety on me. I mean, she’d been getting more and more protective of me, keeping me home from school if the weather was the least bit bad, that sort of thing, but when I was fourteen I wanted to go to a school dance. She said no. She put a padlock on my bedroom door and locked me in. Until my dad died, I’d been pretty independent, free to run around the neighborhood with my friends, so I didn’t take well to being locked up. Especially not when my date was Damian Vernay, who’d I’d been crushing on for three months.”

“Damian the bartender?” he asked.

I laughed. “The same. Not sure what I ever saw in him, but at the time I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from that dance. I shimmied out the window, walked to Carrie’s house and got a ride with her parents. I told Carrie my mom had come down with the stomach bug and couldn’t drive me.”

“Damian didn’t pick you up?”

I cupped his chin and rubbed my thumb over his cheek, trying to erase the outrage from his expression. “He wasn’t old enough to drive, Oscar. Anyway, when I got back from the dance, my mother was furious. She said she’d been physically ill with worry about me. She locked me back in my room. At first, I didn’t care. I went to sleep and figured she’d cool off the next day. Except, when I woke up the next day, my door was still locked, and she’d painted my window shut.”

---