The Lies They Tell
Gillian French
One
THE LAST NIGHT the Garrisons set foot inside the Tenney’s Harbor Country Club, the windows were laced with snow. The weather report called for six to eight inches by morning, and three already lay crisp and untouched across the western expanse of lawn beyond the glass. The Garrisons would have their white Christmas. Mother Nature wouldn’t dare disappoint.
Pearl had the distinction of waiting on them. She was a small, spare girl with dark hair worn in a pixie cut and an odd cast to her eyes, which, upon closer examination, were two different colors, brown and blue. She said good evening and handed them a wine and spirits list while they looked through her, registering nothing, clueless that her dad had worked for them for nearly three years now and was, in fact, huddled beside a space heater in their gatehouse at this very moment, watching the Celtics on her tablet.
David Garrison ordered a scotch and water, his wife, Sloane, a white wine. Joseph, their youngest child at ten, frowned at the list and said, “I’ll have a beer,” which earned a laugh from his sister, Cassidy, and a “Hush” from his mother.
Tristan Garrison was absent; Pearl noted it as surely as everyone else in the dining room. Whispers had been circulating around the club for a week: the Garrisons were opening their Tenney’s Harbor home for the holidays, a first. Now one of their remarkable children was missing.
When Pearl returned with drinks and bread, Lou Pulaski, occasional golfing partner of David, came over to the table and clapped David’s shoulder. “Back in the great white north, eh? Damned glad to see ya. Where’s your oldest tonight?”
David’s jaw flexed as he shook out his napkin. “He stayed home.”
“What—back in Greenwich?”
A pause. “No.”
Pearl flicked her gaze at Sloane. She was looking down. So were the kids. Lou chuckled uneasily and lurched onto other topics, but for Pearl’s part, she was glad to take their orders and fade away.
When she reached the kitchen, one of the swinging doors was propped open, and a sparkly ball of evergreen dangled above it. A kissing ball. Some of the busboys stood around, grinning and waiting.
She spun on her heel and ran straight into Reese, who steadied her, his eyes a little bloodshot from the Christmas cheer he’d been into before their shift began. “Watch it, Haskins,” he said.
“You watch it.” She’d been watching him all night—somebody had to—as he chattered, joked, spilled pinot noir on table linens, produced origami geese from cocktail napkins for little kids, and flirted with ladies old enough to be his grandmother. Buzzed or not, he’d crush her in tips; he always did.
Behind them, Indigo Conner said, “You guys,” in a soft singsong, tapping the kissing ball, making it sway.
The chant began: “Do it, do it.” Pearl held her tray in front of her like a shield. “I’ve killed men for less.”
Reese smiled, shrugged, and stepped aside. As Pearl turned, he caught her face in both hands and laid one on her.
She closed her eyes, leaning in, tasting the hint of rum eggnog still on his breath. His fingertips slid up her temples into her hair. People were whooping and whistling, and when the moment finally broke and he let go, she staggered, as if the kiss itself had been holding her up.
Reese went into the kitchen without a backward glance, busboys pounding his back and ruffling his hair. Pearl wiped her mouth, then smoothed her club blouse and tie with hands that felt palsied and weak. When she looked up, Indigo was watching her.
The girl smiled a little as she passed, grazing Pearl’s arm hard enough to let her know she was there. “Everything you hoped for, sweetie?”
Pearl stared, a blush of volcanic proportions rolling up from her collar. She saw her next move so clearly: grabbing a handful of Indigo’s thick, curly ponytail, taking her down into one of the tables, china and crystal exploding around them, her own fists a pummeling blur.
In reality, her face burned and her eyes filled as she made for the patio doors. Damned if she’d let Indigo see her cry.
Outside in the dark, Pearl hit the clapboards and sank into a crouch, savoring the sting of the wind. Ten seconds. She could afford a ten-second meltdown. Then chin up, back to work, before that little Nazi Meriwether came out here to see who was wasting club time.
Fifteen minutes later, face washed, cowlick combed down, Pearl delivered the Garrisons’ entrées. She thought she sensed Cassidy studying her eyes, but that was nothing new. She hoped they didn’t still look weepy. From the direction of the kitchen, a faint cheer went up as the busboys caught more victims. “Can I get anyone any—?”
“No.” David’s tone was clipped. He didn’t look at her as he sawed into his roast duckling. Pearl gave a half bow and departed, careful to skirt Indigo and Reese in case the urge to tackle came on her again.
The Garrisons ate. Onstage, Steve Mills, who performed cocktail piano standards at the baby grand every weekend, launched into “Merry Christmas, Baby.” Once the Garrisons had scraped their bowls of crème br?lée clean, Steve said into the mic, “Good to see some of our snowbird members, the Garrisons, joining us tonight on this Christmas Eve-Eve.” A flourish over the ivories. “Maybe you folks can help me convince Cassidy Garrison to come on up here and play a little something in the spirit of the season?”
A momentary hush as people turned to look at the Garrisons. Asking a piano prodigy like seventeen-year-old Cassidy to “play a little something” felt like asking da Vinci to join in a game of Pictionary. Some reluctant applause followed.
Sloane whispered to her daughter. From where Pearl stood by the Christmas tree, it looked like she squeezed Cassidy’s knee under the table. Placidly, Cassidy pushed her chair back and walked up the risers to the stage as everyone clapped again, relieved.
Slender and erect, Cassidy sat, shook her hair back, placed her fingers on the keys. She may as well have been carved from ivory, cool and flawless beneath the recessed lighting, long pale hair streaming down the back of her midnight-blue dress. She didn’t look like any seventeen-year-old Pearl had ever seen, and Pearl had just turned eighteen last month.
“Gloria in Excelsis Deo” unfolded from Cassidy’s fingertips. She sang in Latin in a clear, glass-bell voice, words that Pearl couldn’t understand, but felt anyway. They made her eyes sting again, this time not unpleasantly, as she stood back among the twinkling lights and German blown-glass bulbs, witnessing what nobody knew would be Cassidy Garrison’s swan song.
The room didn’t breathe until the last note faded into the eaves. This time, the applause was thunderous. People stood. Cassidy said “Thank you” softly into the mic and returned to her family, who waited, unmoved by yet another command performance from the girl who’d brought down the Boston Symphony Hall at age eight.
The Garrisons left soon after that, shrugging on coats made from cashmere and the finest wool, Joseph laughing once, audibly, before the lobby doors closed between them and the night.
Gradually, the evening ended, members signing credit slips and wishing one another a merry Christmas on their way to the coat check. When Pearl went to the kitchen to put in a final dessert order, the kissing ball was gone and the doors were shut; the help was hangdog, meeting no one’s eyes. Meriwether had been here. The fun had been sucked from the premises like sunlight into a black hole.
At closing, Pearl waited by her car to make sure Reese was okay to drive. Ski cap on, hands tucked into the pockets of her Carhartt coat, she shifted from foot to foot, watching the back door.