How We Learned to Lie by Meredith Miller

Author:Meredith Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Daisy

IT WAS JUST before Christmas the night Robbie came home with his hand bandaged up and his neck covered in purple fingerprints. I was in my mother’s bathroom when I heard the front door slam.

She wasn’t there on the bed behind me, sleeping. She wasn’t downstairs making artichoke quiche. Her bedroom was starting to smell like dust, but the lights around the mirror were still warm and yellow. They still made whoever stood in them glow like a movie goddess. The thing was, we weren’t in a movie. Not even my mother. Nothing was going to tie up neatly and make perfect sense after an hour and a half.

“Daisy!” Robbie’s voice sounded hoarse but it didn’t really register. Why would it?

I was thinking about doing something with that circuit that lit up the mirror. It had to be pretty complicated, because if you unscrewed one bulb the others stayed lit. What kind of things could you put in there? Fans and pinwheels and different colored lights and maybe the speakers from phone receivers.

“Daisy! Need to talk to you.”

I looked down into the front hallway and saw the blood on his shirt before I saw the bandages. I could see his nerves singing and twitching too, but it turned out he wasn’t high. Or anyway that wasn’t the reason he was humming like a LILCO wire.

You couldn’t live with Robbie unless you learned not to panic too quick. Whatever it was might get better or it might get worse, but that wouldn’t have anything to do with how you reacted to him. Mainly I was thinking, God damn it, Joan’s coming over. Not now, Robbie.

“Come in here,” he said, and went through the living room doorway.

By the time I got down there he was pouring double shots of Jameson into our grandfather’s Waterford glasses. Whatever it was, he thought it was big. I noticed he wasn’t breathing all the way.

“Sit down.” He was hurt bad. When he saw me staring he said, “For real, you shoulda seen the other guy.”

“Robbie, we need to go to the emergency room.”

“Don’t worry about it. I got seen to already.”

“By a doctor?”

“Sort of. Listen, Daisy. I’m gonna have to do something a little dangerous. If I don’t come back, you need to be careful. I’m pretty sure no one’ll bother you, but if you don’t see me just watch out.”

“Robbie, I think you probably need to calm down. Who’d you get in a fight with?”

“You’re gonna have to take some of this on, Daisy.” He waved his hand around at the house.

“What? I’m doing more stuff than you, Robbie. Who do you think raked the leaves? Who do you think keeps putting stuff in the dishwasher?”

“You know what? Before you came I was the golden boy. When I was little Dad used to look at me like now that I was in the world, he could stand up straight and feel no pain. Later, he started staying away, and Mom kind of went to sleep and stopped taking care of her hair.

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