Mar 1, 2026 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 7
Based on a true story.
My Grandma Hattie died on Christmas Eve in 2006, and her absence from the world knocked the wind out of me like I’d been socked in the gut with a duffle bag full of bricks.
Technically, she was my step-grandmother, but I’d loved her fiercely since I was a little kid, when she married my widower grandpa. We lived far away from my grandparents, so visiting her was how we spent lots of family vacations.
On the first day of school my fourth-grade year when we were asked to report on our summer vacations, I was telling my classmates about Gramma. How she made spaghetti for dinner. How she bought pull-apart cinnamon bread from a corner grocer so close to her house you could walk to it, how she baked the best zucchini bread in the world, and how she had rhubarb growing right in her back yard. I went on about how she taught me to do Cryptoquip puzzles in the daily newspaper, then shared how she let me put pink plastic rollers in her silvery hair while we watched a Cubs game on TV one night.
Most of my contemporaries were telling the class about their trips to Disney World. I always felt sorry for them.
Anyway, the Christmas she died, I was between the fall and spring semester of my junior year at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. My only obligation until after the new year was to my two very part-time jobs—office manager at a psychiatrist’s clinic on Fridays, and editorial assistant at The Saturday Evening Post on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I arranged my work schedule around the two-day trip to Freeport, Illinois to attend her funeral and be with my family, but I didn’t tell anyone at either job why I altered my schedule. I’d been feeling more reclusive, wanting to keep everything about my private live private.
“You don’t have to go with me for the funeral,” I told Rodney while filling a small carry on with clothes, a hair dryer, travel size toiletries, and a make up bag. “You barely knew her, and besides you shouldn’t ask your boss for more time off right now. We still have at least three sessions with Pastor Tim next month.” It was all true, but there was another reason I didn’t want Rodney to go with me on the road trip: I didn’t want him to go with me anywhere.
One of the many, many downsides to evaluating every word that slithered past my lying husband’s forked tongue was that judgment became a compulsion for me. Witnessing how often he lied, and how often he did it in my presence, somehow resulted in my developing anthropophobic tendencies. Rodney lied to my boss and coworkers at the Christmas party. He lied to new friends I’d made at church. He lied to my best friend Liz when she came over to study. And whether he was telling his brother-in-law about the time he had to return the Fossil watch he hadn’t actually purchased or he was telling the girl behind the deli counter how much he enjoyed a movie he had never seen, my reaction was always visceral. My eyes darted shiftily to see who else knew I was abetting a dude who told bald-faced lies for absolutely no reason.
I hated being party to the deception and resented him for making me a fool. Because I was the one with the conscience, I was the one who bore the shame of his lies. Shame was a daily mantle I wore, whether I was around when he told a lie or not. I was always wondering what shit he was making up when I wasn’t there, what story I was going to have to pretend I already knew about.
To this day, I still feel a little guilty that I never called him out while he was lying to someone. Still, I am pretty sure that I was Rodney’s tell. When people saw my cheeks flush and my gaze drop to my shoes—which was pretty much any time his mouth was moving—they had to know. Had to. “People aren’t stupid,” I told him once hoping fear of judgment would get him to lie less, seeing how his image meant more to him than anything else in the world. “They all know you’re full of shit. They’re just too nice to call you a phony.” Unfortunately, that strategy had zero effect. Nothing I ever said, not even the harshest truth, could pierce the veil of lies he told to himself about himself.
“I’ll be damned if he’s going to lie to my family at Gramma’s funeral,” I muttered to no one, zipping my suitcase.
It turned out driving north on the interstate with nothing to see but prairie grass, wind turbines, and sky for miles and miles gave me time to lean into my grief and forget I married a sociopath. I reminisced about Gramma. About how I used to tease her saying, “You’ve got the brownest eyes, you must be an Ackerman!” She once told me she hated people saying that to her growing up, so naturally I never let it go. I thought about how I used to trace the veins on the backs of her softly aged hands. I thought about how scared she must have been to get lost in her own hometown driving home from the bank one day. It turned out she’d had a brain tumor—a coincidental plight I wouldn’t learn I shared with her for another decade.
By the time Gramma’s funeral was over and I was back on the road to Indianapolis, I was out of tears. The funeral home turned out to be a great safe space for weeping over everything, not just death. When I’d finished crying for Gramma, I cried about all things Rodney, and finally I cried from sheer exhaustion. I was tired of working two jobs, going to school full-time, doing all the cleaning and cooking, all the emotional labor, and then trying to salvage a marriage with a man I couldn’t stand. I was beginning to understand that the hate and resentment I harbored for Rodney was disabling me.
But diligent to a fault, I decided I to check in with him. I called Rodney from an I-39 gas station about a quarter mile from Bloomington-Normal to let him know how much longer I would be. He didn’t pick up, so I left him a voice mail. “I’ll probably be home about…seven o’clock?” I said, pausing briefly to calculate how many hours I still had on the road plus account for the time difference. “Let’s just get dinner at Qdoba tonight. I’m not going to feel like cooking. See you in a bit.” I grabbed a caffeinated beverage and a bag of pretzels from the convenience store before getting back on the road. I wasn’t hungry, still full up on grief and all, but I snacked out of habit to keep me alert.
Rolling into the driveway about three hours later, I pushed the button on the garage door opener. Rodney’s truck wasn’t inside. No big deal, but I was starving and unwilling to sit even another minute behind the wheel. I was also too drained to endure having pizza delivered to the condo no delivery driver on earth could find. Maybe Rodney was at the library or something and could stop at the Qdoba near campus on his way home. I texted him.
“Just got home. So hungry. Where are you?”
He texted back, “Be there in 20.”
I noticed the time stamp on my text was just a little after 6 p.m., much earlier than I thought I’d be home. I wrinkled my forehead trying to check my math. How did I get home so early? I chalked it up to bad math. I was an English major after all.
Rodney’s truck eventually rumbled into the driveway. I was loitering in the yard with Taubensee. He’d already done his business and was rooting around the lawn, sticking his nose down the chipmunks’ tunnel and sniffing tree trunks for pee-mail from the neighbor’s dog. Rodney slammed his truck door, and Taub and I both turned to look.
“What are you doing here?” he snarled, loud enough for anyone on the block to hear.
“Fuck you, I live here,” I snapped. I was never in a mood for Rodney’s bullshit, but I was seriously not in the mood just then. I didn’t care who heard us fighting.
“You’re an hour early,” he said.
Before I had a chance to say, “So?” something dawned on me. He thought I’d intentionally arrived home an hour earlier than I’d told him I would. It was a nefarious plot. Entrapment.
He slung his messenger bag over his shoulder in a huff and said, “You have to learn to trust me, you know.”
“Actually, I don’t,” I said, walking over to examine an envelope that had fallen out of his bag. “I don’t have to trust you any more than you have to tell the truth.” He hadn’t realized he’d dropped anything. “So where were you?” I held the envelope inches from his face. It was addressed simply to “Rodney” in a feminine, flowing script and there was a smiley face drawn inside the “O”. He reached for it, but I drew it back quickly and removed the card inside. It was from Lucy. I looked again at his unzipped bag and noticed a red and green box poking out of the center pocket. “You exchanged Christmas gifts with her while I was at my grandmother’s funeral?” I might have cried if I was hydrated enough to produce tears. “You’re shameless.”
“It was better than having to spend Christmas Day with you.” I was surprised he didn’t stick his tongue out at me after he said it. He landed jabs like a playground bully. No, worse than a playground bully.
Taub pulled me as a squirrel crossed at the end of the drive, but I maintained my ground. “You are the world’s most inept cheater. I mean, you wear indiscretion like a clown wears shoes. You can’t even bother to zip your bag to secure the evidence?”
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Dec 20, 2025 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 6
Based on a true story.
Rodney was surprisingly amenable to couple’s counseling once the whole Lucy thing was exposed. At first, I thought he genuinely wanted to fix things, but what he really wanted was to control the narrative.
But I suppose if I’m being honest, image meant a little bit more to 26-year-old Emily than it does to 39-year-old Emily. The difference was that Rodney was afraid the world would know he had been rejected if we divorced, and I was afraid everyone would think I was easy to dupe.
“How did she not know that guy had issues?”
***
Rodney and I had been attending a non-denominational church in a posh north suburb of Indianapolis. It was a 25-minute drive from home, but Rodney liked Fellowship Point because it was attended by affluent, white socialites who drove luxury imports and shopped at Saks. He thought he looked rich—or at least well on his way to rich—by association. I liked Fellowship Point because the sermons were cerebral, not hermetical, and the piano was always in tune.
Lucky for us, Fellowship Point also employed an associate pastor whose job it was to guide troubled couples like Rodney and me toward the ideal Christian union. For free.
Pastor Tim was in his mid-forties. He had thick wavy brown hair, brown eyes, and designer eyeglass frames. The man was exactly what non-therapists expected therapists to look like. We met him at the church on a weekday, so he skipped the tie, opting for a Brooks Brothers shirt and dark slacks. He probably wasn’t the most qualified marriage mentor in central Indiana, but he did have a master’s in counseling psychology. Maybe, I thought, if he couldn’t help me find happily married again (and I suspected he probably couldn’t) he could introduce me to some new way of thinking that made staying married to a lying, cheating, emotionally manipulative psycho tolerable.
“So, what brings you to see me today?” Pastor Tim asked from behind a sprawling cherry desk. A wall-to-wall bookcase with leather-bound books and framed diplomas served as his backdrop. A picture of his family—the same photo from the church directory—sat on the corner of his desk, framed in gold. He held a hand out, gesturing for us to take a seat across from him. The richly upholstered couch coordinated perfectly with the deep greens and burgundies of the carpet and window coverings.
I was already crying as I sank into the sofa, blotting the corners of my eyes with a tissue I’d snagged from the end table beside me. As he closed the door behind him and took his spot next to me, I gave Rodney a look that said, “You’re why we’re here. Start talking.”
“I had a relationship with another woman,” Rodney said, no hint of shame in his voice at all. It baffled me how he could go months at a time without uttering a single truth. It also baffled me that when he was faced with the humiliating truth of, say, telling his pastor he’d cheated on his wife, he could deliver the lines as dispassionately as if he were describing the bristles on a toothbrush.
My stomach churned like it did every time a new person was brought into the loop, but I felt particularly exposed watching a stranger react, ladling on another scoop of pity. Already gasping my way though heavy sobs, I managed to explain to Pastor Tim that Rodney still had class with Lucy once a week until at least the end of the semester, and possibly until he finished his degree. “The program is small. Most students are on the same academic track until graduation.” Making sure not to gloss over Rodney’s misdeeds, I blurted, “I don’t trust him at all. We’re not just here about Lucy. Rodney lies about everything.”
I felt like a tattletale.
Pastor Tim thought I was using hyperbole to make Rodney look bad and offered to reframe my statement in a way that seemed more reasonable. “When trust is broken, we often—”
“No,” I said flatly, my anger sobering me up some. “You don’t understand. Rodney is a compulsive liar AND he does some cheating in his spare time. He didn’t recently take up lying to avoid the consequences of fu… uh, having a relationship with Lucy. He lies because he’s a liar.”
Pastor Tim’s eyebrows went up, so I knew that he was having an inkling. At least someone was finally having an inkling. It was maddening that people never believed me.
The leather executive chair groaned as Pastor Tim turned to face me more directly. His eyes softened with empathy. “I believe I can help you both find a path toward reconciliation, but this is going to be slightly more complicated than rebuilding after an affair. That’s complicated enough.” He looked at Rodney and said, “I’d like to recommend a psychiatrist, someone to help you analyze this from a more clinical perspective.
I gave Rodney an I-told-you-so look
.I wouldn’t say I felt hopeful at the end of the first session, but I did feel a little less hopeless. The three of us spent the rest of the hour devising a plan and scheduling weekly appointments. As I added the appointments to my calendar, I thought about how Rodney was going to have to explain the time off he needed to his boss. No doubt he’d lie. He’d probably tell his boss I was having a mental breakdown and needed him to be there.
Before we left, Pastor Tim handed Rodney the card of a psychiatrist, also a member of the church.
Rodney didn’t call the psychiatrist right away, so I threatened to walk if he didn’t schedule an appointment. Then trying to dangle a carrot I added, “If we work hard at it, I don’t see why we can’t survive this.” He agreed, and I even managed to go the next four days without guzzling Pepto Bismol. So great was the relief of pretending I wasn’t alone in trying to fix this thing. Maybe I’d even start sleeping again at night instead of reliving the day’s arguments with Rodney.
That’s the great thing about having a shit marriage in the age of texting. You can snipe at each other all damn day whether tucked away in your cubicle, hiding out in the back of a poorly lit lecture hall, or parked on I-465 waiting for emergency crews to clean crumpled steel and glass off the freeway. Then you go to bed at night and think about what you should have texted that asshole instead.
***
But back to the shrink thing. After his second session with Dr. Born, Rodney waltzed in the front door whistling. I’d been home from my part-time job at the magazine for about an hour and was making dinner. Taubensee was napping on the kitchen floor, curled into a tight circle at my feet.
“I’m done!” Rodney chirped. His cheery disposition was a complete sham. I knew it instantly and my body reacted to the lie by trembling angrily. My shaking was imperceptible to the naked eye, though I physically pulsed with the negative energy Rodney brought into the house. Simmering rage wasn’t a metaphor, it was a literal, physical reaction. And I learned that if I let it bubble long enough, I could qualify for a clinical trial to test a new IBS medication.
Rodney dropped his messenger bag on the dining room table and loosened his tie. Then he flipped through the mail.“You’re done with what?” I asked. I couldn’t hide my disbelief, but I did my best to keep my voice even and calm—for my sake, not his. I tapped a wooden spoon on the side of the pot and dropped it in the spoon rest, then pivoted to face Rodney.
“I’m done with Dr. Born, with therapy. We had a great session today. I really learned a lot. He said that I don’t feel any emotions but anger, probably because Dad beat me. But I’m definitely not a sociopath and don’t need to be in therapy. So I’m done.”
“Really?” I was dubious, and more than a little insulted.
Without missing a beat, Rodney pulled a receipt from his shirt pocket. He was right to assume I didn’t believe him, but a total idiot if he genuinely thought his attending the session was the part of his story I questioned.
I turned back to the pasta cooking on the stove, choosing not to argue. I could have poked a million holes in the tale he’d obviously contrived on his drive home, but what would be the point? I’d had a long day at work, and no matter what anyone else says, avoidance is a legitimate form of self-care.
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Oct 13, 2025 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 5
Based on a true story.
For all his many, many faults, Rodney wasn’t really a drinker. He told me he’d been drunk once or twice while at IU but that being drunk hadn’t really taken. “I remember sitting at a bar in Bloomington. My nose was tingling, and I felt like I was wearing earmuffs. And I was just like, ‘Nope. I’m not going to be like him. I’m not going to beat the shit out of my kid over a peanut butter sandwich.’”
Ed was the archetypal mean drunk. He tried to play it cool around outsiders. Pretend he was just your friendly blue-collar steamfitter in need of a cold one after a long day of pipe installation. But he wasn’t fooling anyone. The mean streak he fueled with domestic swill radiated a good five miles from the room-temperature beer can he was perpetually clutching. He didn’t prefer warm beer. It’s just that he could never wait long enough for it to get cold.
There were other things that Ed couldn’t do. Like respect a human with two X-chromosomes, admit he needed to see a dermatologist about that wicked spot on his arm, or live three and a half states away from a suitable object of abuse.
And so it wasn’t long after Ruth’s suicide that Ed announced he was taking early retirement and moving back to Indianapolis. I wasn’t surprised. I also wasn’t happy.
According to Rodney, it was Ruth who had pushed for the move to Myrtle Beach in the first place. I’d wager Ed went along with it because he thought it might shut her up for a while. Also, from what I gathered, Ruth’s bipolar depression took a more prominent role in her life after her kids were grown and the nest was empty. She was desperate to be happy. Unfortunately for her there was no one more poorly suited to help her get there than her abusive, perpetually drunk husband.
Because Rodney’s disinterest in alcohol turned out to be about the only way he wasn’t like his dad, I am pretty comfortable speculating why Ed agreed to leave Indiana: A move to the East Coast meant that during Ruth’s episodes of discontent he could say, “What more do you want from me, woman? I bought you a house near the beach.” Then Ruth would have to be happy, and he could spend another 25 years avoiding the emotional work healthy marriages require.
The way Rodney described Ruth’s excitement during house hunting, and the way she relayed the story of moving day to me later, I’m convinced the upheaval took place during a manic episode. She picked out the pretty white house with the gabled roof and the pretty front porch that sat prettily on a quiet cul-de-sac because she “saw it in a dream” and “had to have it.” It was a gorgeous house, and it was only about ten minutes from the ocean. She’d read somewhere that the salt and sun would be good for her psoriasis. The first time Rodney and I visited together, she gave me the official tour. She gushed over how Southern the screen door sounded when it swung shut and the way the potted plants on the back deck could stay outside all winter. She’d explained how she’d painted the brick fireplace white to get the shabby-chic look she loved, and she showed me how she’d picked pastel colors for all the bedrooms. She’d even hand painted a dresser in the guest bedroom with cheerful daisies. The bathrooms were outfitted with embroidered hand towels and seashell shaped soap that no one was supposed to use.
In the living room along the wall adjacent to the kitchen, she’d decorated a little spot with brightly colored drawings and paintings. Some of it crayon art clearly drawn by a child with talent, some of it oils painted by a very skilled hand. Underneath the wall arrangement was a small table with a couple of scented votives and a school picture of a bright-eyed, blond ten year old. It was like a shrine to Jennifer. And though I thought it was odd there wasn’t a similar display of Rodney’s photography somewhere in the house, I didn’t bring it up.
Not surprisingly, though, Ed wasn’t keen to keep the house where Ruth had hanged herself—a place literally situated on a dead end. By June he had cashed out his 401(k), bought a brand new pick up truck, and moved into a crummy little house just outside the city limits of Indianapolis in the little village of Clermont. Population 1,400. He was within walking distance of Clermont Liquors, Raceway Pub, and the discount cigarette shop, and—bonus!—there were only two stoplights separating him from our house. Two stoplights separating him from Rodney, his favorite child to shower with drunken antagonism.
Emotionally damaged Rodney might not have been able to produce any tears after looking at his mother’s corpse, but it turns out he could sure get fired up over his dad moving back to town and pretend his wife had something to do with it.
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Aug 22, 2025 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 4
Based on a true story.
“I’m starving,” Rodney complained. “How long can one pizza take?” He angrily punched buttons on the TV remote and stopped flipping channels when he found a rerun of Seinfeld. It was the episode where Kramer tries to operate his own movie phone service. When Kramer got to the line, “Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you’ve selected?” I giggled despite being hangry myself.
I looked over at Rodney, for a second expecting to share a moment of laughter, but he was not moved. He’d been home from work for at least an hour, but there he sat. Still in his starched and ironed work clothes; he hadn’t even taken his shoes off yet. “Why don’t you ever laugh at anything?” I blurted. He laughed at that, sort of, and told me that of course he laughed. Then he asked me why I never noticed.
My stomach growled. To distract myself from the discomfort. I made myself busy grabbing paper plates, napkins, and a couple of sodas from the kitchen so that when the pizza finally did arrive, we could just dive right in. “You know what I hate about this condo?” I said, laying the plates and things on the oak dining room table my parents handed down to us. “No one can ever find it! God help us if we ever need the fire department or something.”
I think the city planners or whoever assigned house numbers to Indianapolis land parcels in 1986 skipped the class—preschool I think it’s called—where you learn how to count. Our unit was 6838 Eagle Creek Path. The unit next to us was 6900, and the unit across from us was 6904. Unit 6837 was down the street tucked away in a cul-de-sac. That was definitely not how numbers were supposed to work, and it made it impossible for anyone to find us. If a delivery driver did end up at our front door, the encounter always went the same way.
“Sorry it took so long. The house numbers out here don’t make any sense.”
“Yeah,” I’d say, “the guys numbering these condos must’ve been smoking something really good.”
Or sometimes the drivers would give up before making it to our driveway and call me from halfway down the block. “Uh, yeah, hi. This is your Donato’s driver. I’m standing here in front of 6837, and…where are you exactly?” When that happened, I’d put on my coat and shoes and head outside. I’d walk to the end of the driveway near a row of mailboxes and give an exaggerated wave in the direction of the only car on the block sporting a light-up roof sign.
“See me now?” I’d say into my cell phone.
The car would roll up, and the window would roll down. “Sorry for the wait,” he’d say handing me the box through the open window. I’d tip him a few extra singles for his trouble and walk wistfully back into the house with my sad, cold pizza.
They never read the delivery instructions on the order. And they never called for help at the first sign of trouble. They always thought they could figure it out on their own if they just tried hard enough. But by the time the pizza finally reached us, the cheese had the texture of a vinyl record left too long in the sun and the pepperoni grease had returned to it’s blaze-orange solid form.
That’s exactly what happened the night of February 2, 2006.
I set the cardboard box down on the dining room table. The smell of tomato and garlic raised Rodney from the couch. He grabbed a plate and a couple of slices. “Finally,” he muttered, shooting me a look. He had a way of making me feel like every inconvenience was my fault. If I hadn’t been so hungry myself, I might have pointed out that he was the genius who insisted on buying the place. Instead, I took a huge bite of my pizza. It was, of course, awful.
Rodney’s phone rang mid-chew and he took it off his belt clip to read the caller ID. “It’s Dad.” He flipped open the phone and answered, “Hey, can I call you back in a few minutes? I’m literally just sitting—” He stared down at his plate. Every muscle in his body tensed, constricting his grip on the phone. The hard plastic shell creaked under the pressure.
“What?” Rodney asked. I heard the voice on the other end of the line repeat something, but I couldn’t make out the words. It sounded bad. Rodney didn’t say anything but “OK” for the rest of the short conversation.
“OK.”
…
“OK.”
…
“OK.”
Then he flipped the phone closed.
“Mom hung herself.” His voice was flat. His face was blank.
I wasn’t terribly fond of Ruth. I mean, as mother-in-laws go, she was fine. But we weren’t what you’d call close. When Rodney and I were first dating, I presumed Ruth and I had trouble warming up to each other because she and Ed lived eleven hours away in Myrtle Beach. It’s hard to get to know someone you never see, right? But when she told us she and Ed weren’t coming to our wedding in 2004 (we had a modest ceremony and reception a few months after we eloped) the distance between the two of us became insurmountable. It had nothing to do with where either of us lived.
“What mother doesn’t come to her own son’s wedding?” I asked Rodney one day. “What father doesn’t move heaven and earth to make sure his wife is sitting in the front row?” I wasn’t mad, I was baffled. I pressed him for details. “What exactly did she say?” Rodney explained she was self-conscious about her psoriasis, as if that made all the sense in the world. “And that means your dad can’t come either?” I asked. “Christ that’s weird.”
But back to February 2, 2006. As soon as those words—mom hung herself—crossed Rodney’s lips, I burst into tears. Sorrow consumed me so wholly and with such intensity that I began to shake and my lips turned purple. It should have been empathy for Rodney’s loss that broke my heart. It wasn’t. I studied Rodney. He was holding himself together really well, looking at me like my inability to contain my emotions was the real tragedy. It was a little scary, truth be told. But I convinced myself that he’d crack when reality finally sunk in.
I didn’t stop crying until the next morning when Rodney and I met his sister Jennifer and brother-in-law Michael at the airport. I was dehydrated from sobbing all night, hungry because we’d abandoned the pizza on the dining room table after the phone call, and exhausted from getting no sleep. The four of us waited in silence to board a plane to South Carolina. I watched a man in a wrinkled suit shout into his Bluetooth headset while a pre-recorded message about loading and unloading zones played too loudly over the public address.
I wondered if the man in the suit had ever thought about killing himself.
Ed’s neighbor picked us up at Myrtle Beach International in Ruth’s van. Seeing the beige Grand Caravan pull up to the curb without Ruth inside, Jennifer said, “This is surreal.”
The house was abuzz with people I’d never seen before, mostly Ruth’s friends from church. Well, they could have been friends with Ed too, but I’d always just assumed he didn’t have any. The women swarmed around Ed, a gruff man with thinning brown hair that was going gray, a large red nose, and a beer belly. He was sitting at the kitchen table, head bowed and resting in his left hand.
A plump woman in her mid-fifties had positioned herself between the living room and kitchen and was deftly directing people carrying deli trays, vegetable trays, dessert platters, and loaves of bread. “Those should go in the fridge for now,” she said to a young woman balancing a plate of fresh fruit in one hand and leading a kindergartner forward with the other. The woman in charge turned to the four of us. Resting a hand on my shoulder and bending slightly to look me in the eye she asked, “Can I help you find something?”
“Uh, we’re the kids?” I pointed to Rodney and Jennifer. “I mean, these are Ruth’s children. And this is Michael, Jennifer’s husband. I’m Emily.”
“Oh!” her eyes widened, and her jaw fell as understanding washed over her face in a wave. She pulled me in, hugging me tightly. The first hug I’d witnessed or taken part in since the news. Yeah, I thought to myself, hugging. That’s what normal people do when someone dies.
“I’m so sorry honey.” She squeezed a little tighter for a second. She was warm and her embrace was a salve. She smelled like vanilla sugar, like the inside of the cookie jar at my grandma’s house. I inhaled the comfort deeply—like a junkie unsure when or where I’d find my next fix.
The woman let go of me and moved down the line to squeeze the others.
“Mabel?” I interrupted her as she threw her arms around a visibly uncomfortable Rodney.
“She’s in the back room, dear.”
I slipped away from the crowd to check on Ruth’s mom.
A few months earlier, the elderly Mabel and her second husband James (her first husband had shot himself decades ago) had moved to Myrtle Beach to live with Ruth and Ed. James passed away shortly after their relocation to the East Coast. So Mabel had her own room on the first floor of Ruth and Ed’s four-bedroom cottage style home. Modestly furnished with two twin beds, two nightstands, and a small TV, the room was sparsely decorated in neutral colors. As if everyone knew it wouldn’t be occupied long. There was a faded La-Z-Boy by the window. Mabel was sitting quietly in the chair. The door was open, so I knocked on the door frame.
“Hi, Mabel.”
“Hi, hon.” She offered me a weak smile and smoothed the blanket on her lap with arthritic fingers. Mabel was a slender woman in her early eighties. Her sweet, grandmotherly features were topped with a dollop of silvery hair. Her bun reminded me of the Pentecostal women I’d see at the grocery store back home in Indiana, but I was pretty sure Mabel was Methodist. She looked good, considering. Her skin was smooth and plump, and her gray eyes were warm and vibrant. Not red and sunken like I had expected.
“How are you? Are you OK? Can I get you anything?” I asked, motioning to the empty glass sitting on the nightstand.
“Maybe a glass of water.”
“Nothing to eat?” I prodded.
She shook her head no. I returned from the kitchen with a glass of tap water and small plate of fruit and cheese for myself. Pointing a thumb toward the kitchen I said, “The women from the church are saying goodbye. I heard them in the kitchen just now. We’re going to the coroner’s as soon as everyone leaves.” Rodney and Jennifer had decided they needed some closure, and services wouldn’t be for a few days because the local funeral home had to prepare and ship the body. Ruth would be returning back home to Indiana. “Are you coming with us?”
“Oh no,” Mabel said. Her gaze dropped to her knees. “I’m going to wait here for Cora Mae. She’s on her way from Kentucky.” Mabel pointed toward a suitcase on the other side of the bed.
“Oh,” I muttered. “Oh! You’re going to live with your sister then?” It took me a moment to understand what she was implying.
Mabel nodded and picked up her glass to take a drink. She used two hands to hold it, because her crippled fingers wouldn’t bend around the cup.
The chatter picked up out in the living room as the screen door screeched open and closed repeatedly. The church ladies were leaving. Ed walked past Mabel’s bedroom, and I overheard him say to Michael, “That woman hasn’t done a goddamn thing for herself since she got here. She won’t even pour her own cup of coffee!”
Christ, I thought, I guess the church ladies tucked Mabel back here for safe keeping.
In the minivan on the way to the morgue, Ed placed the blame for Ruth’s death squarely on Mabel’s frail shoulders. “Your daughter doesn’t come downstairs all day and you don’t once think to check on her?” his voice boomed in the close quarters of the vehicle. Ed had found Ruth’s body the evening before, when he came home from work. The house was quiet and dinner was noticeably not waiting for him, so he went upstairs to see what was wrong. When Ruth wouldn’t open the door, he beat it down.
It made sense that Ed was angry and looking for somewhere to place the blame, but the tragedy was hardly the fault of an eighty-two year old woman who couldn’t climb the stairs. In the back seat of the van, I sat quietly, pulling my arms and legs in closer to my body. I pressed my palms together and squeezed my folded hands between my knees, making a little more room for Ed’s rage. Ridiculously, I hoped that if I made my body small enough, he’d shut up.
Outside the morgue, Ed lit up a cigarette and gestured for us to go on ahead. He wasn’t going in. He’d already confronted that reality and there wasn’t any reason to make himself do it again. Rodney, Jennifer, Michael and I went inside. We said our quiet goodbyes to Ruth, not daring to hover too close to her too still body. The fluorescent bulbs hummed overhead, their light joining forces with the mint green tiles to cast an unnatural glow over the room. It was chilly, even though we still had our coats, hats, and scarves on.
Jennifer was first to break the silence. “Why would she…” Instead of finishing the thought, she sniffled and dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex. We were in there for two minutes tops, but it felt like eons. Sure that we weren’t just living in a nightmare, we shuffled toward to the door.
“You guys go ahead,” Rodney said. “I need a minute.”
It wasn’t long, just a few minutes maybe, when Rodney joined us in the parking lot. “I couldn’t cry,” he whispered to me as the others climbed back into the van.
“That’s alright,” I said. “Not everyone does. Grief is weird.”
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Jul 12, 2025 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 3
Based on a true story.
When it seemed things might be getting serious, I told Rodney I’d choose my dog, Taubensee, over him if it came down to it. Now, you might think this an odd thing to bring up, and you’d be right. But earlier that week my co-worker Tara told me she was giving up the terrier mix she’d rescued from the pound. Her explanation was that her boyfriend “wasn’t really a dog person.” I wanted to make clear as early as necessary that no such fate would befall my Best Friend in the Whole Wide World.
“I only bring it up,” I whispered to Rodney while movie trivia questions flashed on the big screen, “in case you’re one of those jerks who thinks he can wait until things get serious and then pressure me into surrendering my dog to a shelter. It isn’t going to happen. I’m just trying to be fair to you, in case that’s something you expect.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied and squeezed my hand. The theater lights dimmed completely and “Scary Movie 3” started rolling. A few months later we eloped at a Victorian bed and breakfast in New Albany, Indiana. Rodney wore a navy blue suit, and I wore a crimson turtleneck sweater and slacks. A quirky retired pastor presided over the ceremony, and the owner of the B&B was our witness.
I’ve suffered too much trauma since then to remember the pastor’s name, but I do recall vividly the way he took a wad of chewing gum out of his mouth and stuck it to the antique table top in the inn’s formal dining room.
“This is your first marriage?” he asked Rodney as he looked over the details on the marriage license before signing it. “At 31? How’d you manage that?”
Rodney chuckled and said, “The right one comes along when the right one comes along.”
The pastor nodded approvingly, signed the marriage license, and put the glistening blob of Wrigley’s back in his mouth. A few months later, we moved out of Rodney’s crummy one-bedroom on the south side of Indy and into a three-bed, two-bath condo on the west side.
One evening I stopped just inside the front door and dropped my navy blue Jansport on the landing with a thud. “Ughhh,” I deflated, “Class was exceptionally dull.” I slipped off my shoes and tugged a sock back into place. “If my scholarship didn’t depend on it, I’d be really tempted to blow off that class. How was your—”
I looked up to see my husband chasing Taubensee in circles through the house. Down the hall, through the kitchen, around the dining room table, then across the living room and back down the hall again. He hadn’t changed out of his work clothes yet, and the thick soles of his Doc Martens boomed within inches of my dog every time he took another stomping stride. He held his arms out wide, trying to make himself look bigger and more intimidating. Not that it was necessary; Taub’s tail was between his legs, and he was searching for a way out of Rodney’s path. Instinctively, I ascended the half-flight of stairs to the upper floor of the split-level dwelling and put myself between Rodney and the terrified dog, planting my feet solidly so I wouldn’t be knocked down if Rodney didn’t stop in his bully tracks.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shouted about six inches from Rodney’s face. I turned and crouched low to console a trembling Taub. “Hey, buddy, it’s alright,” I cooed, petting his head softly. His eyes were pleading. I stood and raised my voice again to a level more suitable for addressing an asshole. “You ever do anything like that again and…” my heartbeat drummed in my ears. “That dog is the most docile creature you will ever come across in your life! Why were you tormenting him like that?” I waited for an answer but didn’t get one. “What is wrong with you?” I demanded.
“We were just playing, weren’t we, bud?” Rodney’s voice was saccharin smooth. He peeked around me at the dog, as if he really expected a dog would corroborate his story.
That was a distortion of the facts if I’d ever heard one, but rather than press him for the truth, I decided to drop it. I had just witnessed my husband bullying a vulnerable animal—an animal that had intuitively consoled me through some of the hardest days of my life, by the way—and pushing Rodney in that moment seemed like a bad idea. For all of us. So I changed the subject in an attempt to defuse the situation. “I’m going to get ready for the concert. Did you pick up the tickets at will-call on your way home?”
Rodney pulled two tickets out of his back pocket and waved them in the air. Brandi Carlisle was playing at The Vogue in Broad Ripple. “Great!” I did my best to sound upbeat. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.” I changed out of my jeans and T-shirt and put on a stylish, well-fitting knit sweater. Honestly, it was kind of flashy by my standards, but it went well with the black tweed pencil skirt and knee-high boots Rodney had given me for my birthday. I smoothed my skirt, assessed my reflection, and decided to touch up my makeup. Nothing too daring for a Thursday evening, just bolder eye shadow and a little lipstick.
“You’re wearing that?” Rodney scoffed when I emerged from the bathroom.
“Uh, yes?” I held my arms out and looked down. Was there a stain on the sweater? Had I snagged the skirt on something?
“I don’t know why you’d wear something that nice. We’re basically going to a bar, you know. You’ll smell like an ashtray when it’s over.” His words were sharp and mean. Like he was jealous or something. He looked at his watch. “We’ve still got a few minutes before we have to leave. You have time to change.” He gestured toward the bedroom.
I didn’t move. “Are you mad?” I asked disbelievingly. I thought for a minute that he couldn’t be serious, but he looked at me the way my mom used to look at me after she’d given me a direct order. Was he going to count to five too? Whatever, I was nobody’s child anymore. “I’m not changing again,” I said. “We’ll be late. Besides, if the outfit gets smoky, I will wash it.” Judging by the way his right shoulder was twitching, my smart-alack tone struck a nerve.
Sensing bad things were afoot, I avoided further confrontation while simultaneously embracing the Irish temper so generously bestowed upon me through my mother’s line. I slammed the bedroom door, retreating from Rodney’s presence.
Sitting down on the hope chest, I changed out of my clothes, first unzipping my boots and putting the boot shapers back inside, then folding my sweater neatly and putting it back in the dresser drawer, and finally hanging the skirt in the walk-in closet. When I emerged from our bedroom a few minutes later, Rodney was holding the front door open. He did a double-take when he noticed I was in my pajamas. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said. “You have fun.” I strode past him then grabbed the TV remote and flopped onto the couch. I scrolled through the DVR listings until I found reruns of Sex and the City. Rodney hated that show.
“Fine!” He yelled loud enough that I winced. “I’m leaving.” He paused for just a beat to see if I’d protest, but I didn’t. Moments later, the aftermarket mufflers on his pickup growled to life and then faded out of earshot.
I didn’t know it then, but after a decade and a half of reflection on this and countless similar scenes, I realize it wasn’t really my outfit Rodney objected to, after all he’d given it to me as a gift. What he despised was the self-confidence I projected while wearing it.
So yeah, we’d been married about a year, and the honeymoon was definitely over. I, being a mostly well-adjusted person, worried what that fight meant for our marriage. Rodney, however, having witnessed thirty-something years of lying and manipulation fueled by his dad’s Budweiser and exacerbated by his mom’s bipolar depression, figured that if we were yelling at each other in private and doting on each other in public, we must be doing something awfully right.
To Rodney, it was exponentially more important that people thought we were happy than that we were actually happy. I’d never in my life met anyone so Jekyll and Hyde-like, and didn’t intuitively know how to handle him. I was winging pretty much everything after the wedding because Single Rodney was apparently just for show, and Married Rodney was the real deal. From that point on we fought about everything. About how I didn’t make the bed when he told me to. About how I wasn’t bringing in enough money. And about how he was fucking Lucy, a Chinese exchange student in his graduate communications class.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
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Jun 27, 2025 | Who You Gonna Believe, Writing
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 2
Based on a true story.
I can’t deny marrying the guy. It’s a matter of public record. But recalling the moments I genuinely liked Rodney for the sake of telling this story is hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted.
Rodney and I did not grow apart, discovering after many years that we were no longer compatible. We didn’t look at each other over coffee, eggs, and the morning paper and mutually agree that it was time to move on. He did garbage things to me, and I fought like hell for a couple of years to completely extricate him from my life. But I’ll get to all of that.
First, you need to know how things began, and I want you to know that I know how emotionally detached I am from The Beginning.
Some might say I’ve failed as a memoir writer to convey the truth as it was. I don’t know. Maybe I have. But just so we’re clear, it’s not my present disdain for Rodney that gets in the way of this retelling. It’s my knack for repressing memories—specifically the memories I would need to write more genuinely about the early days.
It’s a disability borne of an instinctive need to protect and preserve my own mental health, and I submit that if it weren’t for this disability-slash-superpower, I wouldn’t be here writing so awkwardly about my life circa 2003.
In fact, I probably wouldn’t be here writing at all. Delete
The thing that first attracted me to Rodney wasn’t his smile, it wasn’t his sense of humor, it wasn’t his brown eyes, and it wasn’t his education. No, the thing that really drew me to Rodney’s eHarmony profile was that he lived in Indianapolis—three whole hours away from the small-time Ohio River town where I’d grown up.
At 23, I was a college dropout living in Indiana and working in Kentucky as the secretary for the City of Henderson’s Parks, Recreation, and Cemeteries Department. It was a decent job, but renting shelter houses for family reunions and hunting for the graves of long-dead local celebrities with the president of the county’s historical society wasn’t really doing it for me. Back then I had two hands on the IBM electric typewriter and two eyes on the office door.
My first date with Rodney was dinner followed by a free concert in the park. (I don’t remember the name of the local band, but I do remember there was a fair amount of cringing.)
I suggested we meet at my favorite restaurant, O’Charley’s, for a meal before the concert started. That way, if the company turned out to be horrible—and I figured there was at least an 85% chance that it would—I could at least enjoy warm dinner rolls dunked in cheesy loaded potato soup.
Rodney rolled into the O’Charley’s lot in a 1999 red Dodge Dakota with a growling aftermarket exhaust system. (Present-day me wanted to throw in a joke here, but realized she didn’t need to.) I’d only been waiting at the restaurant entrance for a few minutes when he walked up and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Rodney,” he said, flashing a wide smile just like the one in his eHarmony profile. He stood maybe an inch taller than me at about 5’7”.
He wasn’t overdressed for the venue, but he was better dressed than just about everyone else. His sky-blue dress shirt was starched and ironed. The top two buttons were undone, revealing the collar of a white crew-neck T-shirt underneath. Not only did his dress shirt have a place for those little plastic stays in the collar, he was actually using some.
Rodney wasn’t overweight yet, but at 31 years old it was apparent that overweight was in his near future. His hair was blond and straight, reddish at the temples, and thinning in back. His eyelashes were thick and light, and they grew up and away from his round eyelids in near perfect curls. Despite the hair line, his features teamed up with his round face for an overall effect that was something resembling a grown-up Campbell’s Soup kid.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Let’s get a table.” I have no recollection what I wore for that first date, but I do remember my wardrobe at the time, and it would have given off that working-Baptist-girl-from-the-Midwest vibe. So it was without a doubt clean, plain, and totally unremarkable in every way.
The hostess dropped us off in a cozy corner booth. I asked Rodney about his drive and we chatted about work. “You’re a journalist?” I asked swirling my spoon in a piping hot bowl of soup.
“Was,” he corrected. He pointed to the back of his neck. “You see that?” he asked, pointing to a deep, leathery crater of scar tissue on the back of his neck.
“Whoa. What happened?” I asked, careful not to wrinkle my nose too insensitively.
He buttered a dinner roll under the dim pendant light. “Wrong place, wrong time.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but continued with his story. “I was in the middle of writing a piece for the Kokomo Gazette about a bank robbery one weekend. A few thousand dollars was stolen. Not much of a heist, really. The Kokomo police suspected some local kids were looking to score some extra cash to fund their drug habit or something. Anyway, I was out doing some research so I could wrap up the article on it for the morning edition when I noticed I needed gas. I filled up and went inside to grab a doughnut, and the Circle K was being robbed at gunpoint.”
“Oh my god,” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and put my glass of Mountain Dew back on the cocktail napkin. The straw never reached my lips. “You got shot? No way! Was it the same guys who robbed the bank? Why were they shooting at you?” A family at the next table looked our direction.
“Don’t know for sure if it was the same guys; they didn’t have much evidence to go on for the bank thing. Probably, though,” he added after the slightest pause. Our server came by with our entrees. I thanked her. If Rodney was aware of her presence, he didn’t let on. When he had my full attention again, he continued. “I was fortunate the bullet just grazed me. But it’s like I said—wrong place, wrong time.”
I covered my gaping mouth with my dinner napkin while my steak and potato got cold, either too nervous or too trusting to realize that if that scar had been from an actual bullet wound, he’d be dead. I still had plenty of questions, but I wasn’t sure it was polite to ask them. Did it hurt? Were you in the hospital long? Is the guy who shot you in jail now? How long ago was this? Is that why you flinched outside when we heard the car backfire? Finally, I managed to say, “Is that why you aren’t a reporter anymore? Is that why you moved back to Indy?”
Rodney nodded. We chewed silently while the Goo Goo Dolls played on Muzak and a middle-aged woman at the bar guffawed, margarita in hand. Because I didn’t have an interesting story to follow Rodney’s, the silence felt awkward. I silently scolded myself for being awkward and boring.
“I’m just kidding,” he wiped his mouth, flashing a toothy grin.
“Wait, what?” I left the conversation I was having inside my head and returned to the one he and I were having. I set my fork and knife on my plate, as if doing so would make it easier to study his expression.
“I’m just kidding,” he repeated. He looked at me almost hopefully. As if he was waiting for me to laugh, I think. I was too confused to get the joke.
“So you weren’t shot? Then what happened? With the scar, I mean.”
“I had a funny looking spot the doctor thought was skin cancer, so he cut out a pretty deep hole. Sutures didn’t hold, thing split open in my sleep, and it just never healed right.”
“Oh,” I chuckled at my own gullibility. Delete
My second date with Rodney was an early October evening of fried festival food and sweet treats at the West Side Nut Club Fall Festival. As a rule, I hate crowds but I was willing to make an exception once a year for the event that blessed the world with carnival games, funnel cakes, and bake sale pies and peanut butter fudge from area non-profits.
We walked around for a bit, watching sticky, cotton candy-coated children beg their parents for ride tokens while we ate junk food. When we ate our fill, we made our way west down Franklin Street toward Rodney’s truck. The farther we got from the Tilt-O-Whirl and the roller coaster and the carnival game hosts yelling into their PAs, the more I appreciated how the cool crispness of the early fall evening dampened the sounds of chaos.
Rows of small businesses with their names hand painted on large windows gave way to rows of bungalows with screened-in porches and tiny front yards, many of them decorated for Halloween.
In front of one modest house with peeling white paint and orange pumpkin lights framing the front door, we passed a straw-stuffed scarecrow sitting in a lawn chair just a few feet back from the sidewalk. Only it wasn’t really a straw-stuffed scarecrow. It was a person pretending to be a straw-stuffed scarecrow.
The prankster waited quietly for the perfect moment, then jumped out of his lawn chair and shouted “Boo!”
I jumped back and laughed, a little embarrassed. Rodney stood up straight and stiff and screamed for a good ten seconds. (Ten seconds might not seem like a long time, but I promise you it’s an eternity in certain situations—like when you’re riding out an earthquake or looking on in horror as your date screams like a banshee.)
When he finally stopped, the scarecrow and I stood still, embarrassed, but not for ourselves. I patted Rodney on the back in small circular motions.
“Are you okay?”
He bent over at the waist and drew in long, slow breaths. The scarecrow took off his mask, exposing the face of a remorseful young man, probably still in high school. He apologized. Repeatedly and profusely.
“I am so sorry, man. Do you want to sit down?” He gestured toward the lawn chair with his mask. “Uh, can I get you some water or something?”
Rodney ignored the question, trying his best to laugh off what had happened. “You got me good! I had no idea someone was in there!” The scarecrow and I exchanged a look. Rodney’s exaggerated smile and forced laugh were painfully inauthentic, but it didn’t hurt us in the least to let him have his lie, to save face in front the date he was trying to impress. The scarecrow figured he’d done enough damage, and I figured whatever trauma had turned a harmless Halloween prank into a full-fledged PTSD trigger wasn’t something either Rodney or I were eager to discuss during a borderline successful second date. Delete
Our third date was so intentionally dull, I’ve forgotten what it was.
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Jun 17, 2025 | Front Page, Who You Gonna Believe
Who You Gonna Believe: Chapter 1
Based on a true story.
I was born at Gibson General Hospital with a fully functioning bullshit detector. I didn’t know how to use it, or even that I had one, until my mid-twenties though. Here’s how I discovered it.
One Tuesday circa 2006 or 2007 (I could probably pin down an exact date if I had the energy to dig, but I don’t) I was driving home from my part-time job at The Saturday Evening Post. Light from a Long John Silver’s sign reflected off the windshield of my Malibu and the AC vents pulled in hints of fried fish and seasoned salt. I was having some super serious dinner thoughts while waiting for the light to turn green when my cell phone started ringing. It was Rodney’s ringtone. I couldn’t dig the phone out of my backpack. I was driving.
The first thought that entered my head wasn’t “Darn it, I’m going to miss his call.” or “I wonder what’s up?” It was, “He picked this time to call. He doesn’t want to talk; he wants to leave a voicemail.” It was my bullshit detector, and, baby, it was dialed all the way in.
At home parked in the garage, I dug my phone out of my bag before climbing out of the car. I played his voicemail. “Some of us are having a study session after class tonight. I’ll be late getting home. Don’t wait up.” My bullshit detector decoded the message instantaneously. “Some of us” translated to “two of us” and “study session” was definitely code for, well, something else.
I called Rodney back, but he didn’t pick up. It’s a shame too, because I had plans to ask him what kind of “study session” started at 9 o’clock on a Tuesday night. After all, he was in a night class with a dozen day-job working, graduate-level communications majors. Their grades were based on semester-long capstone projects and term papers, not rote learning. Study sessions are for memorizing verb conjugations and the periodic table with your high school crush, not for drafting independent theses on public relations theory.
That dirty fucking liar. I buzzed with anger, and rage coagulated in my gut. I threw my phone back in my bag and went inside. Then I did what any suspicious wife would do: I curled up on the sofa with a microwaved burrito, a glass of wine, and Rodney’s laptop. I guessed his email password on the first try.
“He’s an idiot,” I whispered to a sleeping Taubensee.
That night, the night of Rodney’s first official “study session” with Lucy, he came home to find a dozen of the emails he’d written to her printed out and taped to the garage door. I had planned to print all fifty-six email threads, but my HP ran out of ink well before the project was finished.
I called my best friend Liz the next day and told her what Rodney had done. Then I told her what I’d done. “Four out of ten,” she said.
“Four out of ten what?” I asked.
“Four out of ten stars on your revenge project. It’s slightly humiliating—especially forcing him to stare down their ridiculous nicknames for each other—but it’s not at all destructive. And no one else saw it, since, you know, it was inside your garage.” She puffed her cigarette, then added, “There’s this Carrie Underwood song I think you should listen to, Em.”
I laughed. That’s why I called Liz. I needed to be distracted from the hurt and humiliation. “I didn’t go all 95 Theses with their emails for revenge, Liz. It was strategy. See, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that Rodney will deny anything that isn’t staring him in the face.”
One Saturday afternoon about six months into our marriage, Rodney confessed to me that he was a compulsive liar. “Can you sit down for a second? There’s something I need to tell you.” He patted the couch cushion. He looked, I don’t know, scared or something.
“What is it?” I took a seat beside him.
“There’s something you should know about me.” He hesitated, and I waited impatiently for the big reveal. While I waited, I picked at the lint on the couch and floated a few possibilities: he was gay, he’d gambled away our savings, he was addicted to painkillers, he had a secret family he kept locked in a basement on the other side of town, he’d failed to pay the mortgage and the bank was foreclosing, he’d been fired from his job.
“Just tell me,” I pleaded. “Whatever it is, it’ll be OK.” My naïve, sheltered little heart believed it really would be.
Rodney sucked in a big breath and then blurted, “I’m a compulsive liar.”
“OK,” I said hesitantly, trying to figure out how I felt about the news. “What does that mean? What have you lied about?”
“Everything,” he said. “Everything, but mostly nothing. Like, OK, you know how I told you that story about the Halloween party at Sigma Pi my senior year of college?”
“Yeah.”
“I was never in a fraternity.” He lowered his head in his hands and exhaled, “And my grandpa wasn’t a fighter pilot. And I never won the spelling bee in fifth grade. And we never had a family cat when I was little. And I never smashed my brother’s fingers in the car door when we were at Disney World. I’ve never even been to Disney World.”
I knew lying was bad for relationships, but I was struggling to process how devastating his revelation was to our marriage. “I don’t get it,” I stood up and walked to the kitchen for a glass of water. “Why lie about any of that? It doesn’t even make you look good or protect you from anything. You know what I mean?” I shut off the tap and took a sip from my glass. “Like, ‘No, officer, I didn’t see that stop sign.’ That’s a lie I understand.” I scrunched my face in confusion. “Wait. Did you think being a frat guy made you more attractive? Because I—”
“I can’t explain why I do it,” he said turning his palms up and shrugging. Now that was something I believed. As our relatively short marriage had already proven, Rodney came from a long line of incredibly fucked up people who’d developed coping mechanisms more destructive than their actual problems. His grandparents, his mom, his dad. They were all completely self-absorbed, but not one of them possessed a single drop of self-awareness. Narcissists, I called them, not entirely sure if I was using the word right. Jennifer, his younger sister, seemed well-adjusted and down to earth, capable of empathy, but there’s always one black sheep, right?
“Oh my god!” My revelation was punctuated by the clink of glass on the tabletop. “Our first date! The story about you getting shot at Circle K!” I pointed at him.
Rodney nodded. “You were quiet for a long time that night. I figured you knew I was lying. So I turned it into a joke.”
For three and a half hours, I quizzed Rodney about all the stories he’d told me since we first met. The ones I could remember anyway. Almost all of them were lies, that is, if what he was saying right then was the truth. If a guy tells you he’s a compulsive liar, can you believe him when he tells you which lies are lies? I started to ask him why he was telling me any of this but stopped mid-sentence. What was the point? Unless I was missing something, his confession wasn’t likely the result of some crisis of conscience; it was a carefully weighed decision. One he felt would protect him from something worse. His confession was equivalent to the Friday afternoon news dump at the White House.
The next day Rodney’s confession was still fresh. I had been stewing over it while drinking my coffee when I looked up at a poem on the living room wall. Typed on parchment using his grandfather’s Underwood, I had framed the cute little rhyme he gave me on our third—or maybe fourth?—date. I wasn’t really into poetry, but I made an exception for this little delight. It was nothing like that literary crap I’d been forced to read in high school. It was quirky and lyrical, and it was written just for me.
Or was it?
Something compelled me to search the first line on Google, and in .55 seconds, I was clicking on a link to the full poem. I rationalized for a bit. He never said he wrote the poem that day. I assumed. But the author wasn’t credited at the end of the typed piece. Isn’t that kind of standard? This poem is kind of popular. I should have known it wasn’t a Rodney original. He probably assumed I was well-read.
I decided to ask him. “Hey, did you write this?” I did my best not to make it sound like a big deal, whatever his answer.
He looked away from the book he was reading. “Yep.”
“Really?” I said. “Because It seems kind of familiar to me.”
“I wrote it for you. I gave it to you before we went to the Eitlejorg. Remember?”
It was the fifth date then. “That’s weird, because Google says it was published by an award-winning poet in 1996.” God knows why, but I felt bad for him. I cringed sympathetically, the way I did for tone deaf American Idol singers whose moms didn’t love them enough to tell them they couldn’t sing. But Rodney wasn’t embarrassed, he was irritated. Like the villain at the end of the Scooby-Doo cartoon grouching about “those meddling kids.”
“Oh, yeah, whatever.” Rodney waved me off.
I wasn’t at all comfortable with how that had gone, but the exchange did teach me how to get the truth out of Rodney: dig it up on my own first, then confront him with evidence. I could, for example, stick a poet’s web site under his nose. Or—just spitballiing here—maybe tape his own words to a door moments before he was about to walk through it.
The study session ended around 11:30 that night. Rodney came in with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder and an 8.5 x 11” piece of inkjet paper in his left hand. A normal husband would have probably begged forgiveness or whipped out the old “I can explain” song and dance. But not my Rodney. “How dare you read my email!” he screamed at me, red-faced and shaky.
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