Finding out About the Lie

The water in the sink overflows and I have a mess to clean up, but my brain is short-circuiting with anger and I can't remember how to turn off the taps. The water runs and runs until there is water on the floor and everywhere and soap suds are sliding down the cupboard doors. I hear a car drive up to the house but I don't move. My mother and Alan Phoenix come into the kitchen. I am still standing at the counter, my jean dress soaked on the front, my feet in a slippery puddle that is getting larger all the time. I have sent anger from my core into the soles of my feet and now they are too heavy for walking. "Taylor, for God's sake, turn off the water!" my mother yells, running over to the sink.

"This is not a real job, is it?" I say, after she has turned off the taps. "This is not a real job and I am just here on a trick, and so I can't put it on my resumé, can I?"

My voice is in the red zone and climbing higher, and Alan Phoenix puts his hand on my arm and I fling myself away, slipping on the wet tiles. "Can I? This isn't something for my resumé—this is just something you made up so the both of you could spend the summer in France and I would want to come along!"

"Taylor, it isn't like that!" says my mother, calling after me because I am now in the living room and heading for the stairs. I feel like I am walking through mud except I am not.

"It isn't like that!" repeats my mother. "Come back and we'll talk about it! Your Grandma left us all this money and she would have been so happy to know we were traveling …"

I slam my door and I do not care that it is hard on the hinges. I can hear voices downstairs and my mother's voice is in the red zone.

"What did you say to her?" she yells.

"Nothing! I didn't tell her anything, but somebody should have. Giving her this job wasn't fair and you know it!" says Luke Phoenix. "Everybody around here operates on lies and deception—nobody tells anyone how things really are!"

"Wait just a minute," says Alan Phoenix, and then I can't hear what they are saying. I open my door so that I can hear better, and then I hear Martin Phoenix's Tango voice: "What's the trouble? I'm trying to sleep."

"Sorry we woke you," says Alan Phoenix. "It's nothing."

"See!" shouts Luke Phoenix. "More lies!"

"What's up with you?" says Alan Phoenix. "This isn't about you."

"I have my own stuff going on," says Luke Phoenix. "I'm stuck here afternoons and evenings when you originally promised I'd just be with Martin for the mornings!"

"What stuff? What's going on that you can't spend an evening or two with your brother?" says Alan Phoenix.

"Never mind!" says Luke Phoenix.

"She'd never have come all this way unless we promised her this job," says my mother, and now I'm running back down the stairs to where they are all standing in the living room.

"Lies and deception! You have ruined my resumé!" I tell her. "You have given me a summer with an empty resumé, and now I will never get a full-time job, and I will be stuck with you until you die and I am living alone!"

"Can't I have any fun?" my mother screams. "Can't I travel, just once, when the opportunity arises, without feeling guilty?"

I grab a cushion from the couch and throw it at the wall.

"Hold on, Taylor!" calls Alan Phoenix.

"Too late!" I yell. "I already let go!"

"Let's just all calm down and talk about this like normal people," says Alan Phoenix.

"Shut up!" I tell him. "We are normal people." I take a deep breath so that my voice does not stay in the red zone. "I want to be treated like an adult because I am nineteen and that means I am an adult. I am never late for work except once last summer when I was running away, and I am very responsible. I want to be told the facts about how things are and make my own decisions. You are NOT the boss of me!" I say to my mother. She starts to speak and then stops and tears come out of her eyes.

"I have to help you sometimes," she says finally. "I have to help you with things."

"No," I say. "I have to help myself. I will not be like Stanley whose landlady did everything for him and fed him cornflakes even though he was afraid of them." They are quiet, looking at me.

"Who is Stanley?" says Martin Phoenix from his bedroom.

All the words about Stanley are in me waiting to come out. I know this is not the time for them, but I do not know what other words it is time for. I think of other things I could say, but this is not the time for them either, so I choke back what I am thinking: Gerbils are rodents. They can also be described as small mammals. They are nocturnal, and although they make good pets, they do make noise in their cages at night. They drum with their feet against the metal floor. This is their best way of communicating.

I look at Alan Phoenix and Luke Phoenix and my mother. They are standing in the living room and they are waiting for me to speak. Alan Phoenix has rubbed the back of his head so hard that all his hair is standing up on end. I take a deep breath. Then I take another. Then I feel lightheaded and stop breathing while I count to five.

"I am responsible for myself!" I say finally, thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre's little gray book. "That is how I am free. I am sometimes an unconscious subject of the world. I am sometimes a conscious object of the world. But I am also acting upon the world. I am going to Cassis again next Friday to see Adelaide and no one can stop me. And I am not babysitting Martin Phoenix any more unless it is a real job and it is called 'personal care assistant'."

Luke Phoenix throws himself onto the couch and puts a pillow over his head. Alan Phoenix and my mother stay standing.

"It is a real job," says Alan Phoenix. "I'm—I'm sorry, Taylor, that you thought it was all a trick. Your mother and I did plan this so that you would want to come with us to France, but you have been a great babysitter—a great personal care assistant—and I hope, for Martin's sake, that you will continue."

"Who is paying me?" I ask.

My mother looks at Alan Phoenix.

"I am," he says. "Once your mother pays her share of the rent on this place, I can afford it."

"Rent?" my mother says. "Oh, yes. Yes, that's fine." Her forehead has that h of wrinkles in the middle of it.

The two of them look at me and I want them to put their eye gaze in another direction.

"Okay," I say. "I will not quit unless conditions worsen." I turn and go up the stairs, and then I stop.

"Good night," I say, wanting to end on a positive note. I think maybe my friend Luke Phoenix will take the pillow from his face and quote a poem, but he does not. Silence wells behind me as I walk up the stairs. Then I hear the Tango.

"Good night," Martin Phoenix calls from his bedroom. "At last sweet peace."