Read The Good Lie for Free Online Page B

his
head with an upstretched middle finger and shouted to my father, “Good night!”
    My father pitched the rock.  It
landed on Posie’s hood.  Posie screamed and peeled out of our driveway.
    And now came the good part.
    “Are you sleeping with that boy?”
my father demanded.
    “Of course not!”
    “Liar!”
    “I am not a liar!”
    My father pointed to the ring on my
left hand.  “That doesn’t mean anything to you?”
    “Of course it does!”  I hated that
he would ask that.  I could feel the tears start to burn.
    “Where did your mother take Mikey?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “If she’s not back in ten minutes,
I’m calling the police.”
    “Great, Dad.  That’ll really help.”
    “You’re just like your mother, you
know that?”
    “Thank you so much.”  I fled to my
room before he could see me cry.
    Bastards.  All of them.

Funny, the Things That Matter
    It was the end of May.  School was
almost out.  My mother had been gone for over a month.
    I still wasn’t taking her calls. 
Why should I?  What could she say? 
    Gee, honey, sorry I disappeared
like that without telling you.  Whoops, sorry I left you to take care of the
house and my husband and child.  Darn, did I mention how much fun I’m having
with my new lover?  Hope your life can be this good one day.
    I tried to pretend I wasn’t part of
this family.  Finals were coming and I needed to focus.  School is something I’m
good at.  I wasn’t going to let anyone mess that up.
    So I pretended I was just a person
staying in that house, a tenant living my own independent life, reading,
studying, eating in my room, hiding out at Posie’s as often as I could.  That
poor Aimes family could go through their twisted tragedy alone.  It had nothing
to do with me.
    Funny, the things that matter.
    The thing that finally got to me
was that the food was all wrong.  My father didn’t know how to shop. 
Store-bought cookies—the cheapest kind, those vanilla and strawberry wafers
that melt in your mouth and come six hundred to a package.  Generic sodas,
frozen pizzas, huge rounds of cheese that my father ate by the hunk, chips and
crackers and candy bars—a bachelor’s pantry.  Mikey loved it.  It made me want
to cry.
    After a while I couldn’t look
inside the fridge or the cupboards anymore.  I didn’t recognize the colors or
the shapes of any of the packages or cans or bottles.  It was as if my  mother
moved out and took all the good flavors with her.
    So I took her place.  I did it
because to live in squalor was too near to having no mother, and I couldn’t
bear that anymore.
    I had to eat regular food, so I
started cooking it.  For all of us.  I made grocery lists so my father could
get it right.  I did the laundry and ironing not just for myself but for him
because I couldn’t stand the smell in his room from dirty socks and underwear
and sweat-stained shirts.  I cleaned for my little brother who deserved a life
like the one I had at his age.  When I came home from school in third grade my
mother was always there.  It wasn’t fair that Mikey came home to no one.
    None of it was fair.
    As if that ever matters.

Virgins to the Core
    [1]
    Do you think you know the story of
Sodom and Gomorrah?  Yes, the sky rained sulfur and brimstone, Lot’s wife
turned into a pillar of salt—those are the movie details.
    Here are the details I’ve never
missed:
    Two angels come to Sodom, and Lot
sees them hanging out in the town square as evening falls.  Lot knows the men
in his town, and knows that strangers do not fare well after dark.  He insists
that the visitors come home with him.  He does not know they are angels.
    As Lot and his wife and daughters
and the two angels sit down to supper, there’s a pounding at the door.  The men
of Sodom have come to welcome the two strangers.  “Send them out so we can rape
them.”
    Lot begs the mob not to disgrace
his house or his hospitality by doing this shameful thing.