False Faces

by Michael J. Vowles

A shadow stepped out of the darkening tamarack too late for them to see. His foot slammed on the brake. She shut her eyes. Only the trees, swaying imperceptibly against the yellowing horizon, bore witness.

Four hours earlier, Jessica Washburn was sat on the cabin deck staring at a conversation thread with her husband on her phone.

So when are you getting here then?

There were two ticks next to her message, but they hadn’t turned blue yet. Even if he turned up now, the day had pretty much been wasted. Jessica took a long drag on the watermelon vape she had stolen from her stepdaughter and stared at a painted carving of a great gray owl in the corner of the deck. The yellow eyes betrayed no discernible emotion. They just stared back at her until she felt a restless spasm in her gut. She went back inside to put her phone on charge before heading down to the boathouse.

If Shane was going to turn up, she didn’t want him to find her glued to her phone, waiting for him. She pulled a kayak from the boathouse and set out across the lake, not bothering to put on a life jacket. She passed beside the first island and continued into the open water. The island was covered with pine trees. As a little girl, she had played hide-and-go-seek there with her brother. One time she came back with a wood tick sticking out of her belly. Its little legs flailed as it feasted on her and she recalled the mix of horror and fascination as she held up her pajama shirt that night. Still, it didn’t stop her going back to play on the island.

Their games included a gangly, quiet boy whose family had a cabin on the opposite side of the lake. When she became a teenager, she would bully her little brother so that he would storm off and leave her alone on the island with him. Presently, Jessica tied her kayak to a dock and ascended the log staircase to a gravel yard. She found the boy—now a forty-something man—working on a new carving just outside the workshop. Tommy had grown out of the clumsiness of his youth. Now his large hands operated with finesse and precision, spider-like in their creativity. Still, he seemed surprised to see her walking up from his dock.

“Hey Jess,” he said in his rumbling baritone, keeping his eyes on the carving. Jessica looked at it. From a distance she thought it might be a model of a canoe, but now she could see what looked like a bulbous nose in the center.

“What are you working on?”

“It’s a False Face mask,” Tommy said, lifting it to show her. The long basswood face was painted dark red, with a crooked nose that twisted to the left, and a head of black horse tail hair. Tommy was busy tying pouches of tobacco into the fringe.

“It’s quite different to your usual projects,” Jessica said, casting an eye to the yard. All around the yard were painted statues that Tommy sold to tourists in the summer. Black bears, bald eagles, muskellunge, some as tall as she was. A sign by the road read “Tommy’s Chainsaw Carvings.”

“This isn’t for sale,” Tommy said. “These masks are sacred.”

“Oh,” Jessica said, as if she understood. She shifted her weight onto her other foot and Tommy smiled at her. It seemed like they were going to lapse into silence as Tommy continued his work, but after a pause she blurted out, “It’s mine and Shane’s anniversary today.”

Tommy wished her Happy Anniversary without looking up. This time they did lapse into silence, and Jessica thought back to the conversation she had had with her friend Olivia on their lunch break last week.

“We haven’t had sex in over a year.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. What I do know is that you should spend some quality time together for your anniversary. No kids, just the two of you. Go up to the cabin for the weekend. I’m sure that will do the trick.”

Jessica told Tommy she had no idea where her husband was.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Tommy said.

“The last thing he said was that something came up at work.”

“He’s probably on his way,” Tommy said, sitting back in his chair and examining the wooden mask. It looked finished. When Jessica didn’t say anything, he said, “You don’t think so?”

This, Jessica knew, was what happened when your relationship was founded on a lie. At some point, she had to wonder if the same thing that had happened to Shane’s first wife would happen to her. The signs were there; Shane found more excuses not to spend time with her, their conversations had become mostly functional, her figure had softened where she wanted it flat and flattened where she wanted it soft.

Sixteen years ago, a business trip to Superior had ended with the two of them stopping at her family’s cabin here on the lake. The next morning, she asked him if he regretted what they had done. Shane had looked her in the eye and said no. He promised he would leave his wife, but every time she brought it up, he told her that the time wasn’t right. It wasn’t lost on her how easy it was for him to lie to his family, how it didn’t seem to weigh on him. But then again, Jessica never would have thought of herself as someone capable of being complicit in it.

Whenever Jessica was asked to tell the story of how they met, she lied. People ate it up and told her how sweet they were. It was easy, in a way that she hadn’t expected it to be. She started to wonder then if she had learned how to lie from her husband, or if he had merely awakened what was in her all along.

As he lied to the first Mrs. Washburn, she had lied to her family. She arranged for them not to come to the cabin on select weekends so that she and Shane could use it. Book club was the usual excuse. Shane found it amusing and soon it became a private joke between the two of them. Book Club meant sex—a lot of sex. More than she ever had in college, more than she ever imagined herself having the appetite for. But it meant something else too. Once they were there, she felt like she could breathe. The lake was a place she didn’t have to pretend. She would stare out at the island and Shane would wrap his arms around her waist as he kissed her neck. Jessica would shut her eyes and give herself entirely to him, feeling the weight of their lies washing clean off of her.

“You drive me crazy. I can’t sleep at night…”

When she got pregnant, the lying became untenable for her. Shane swore he would leave his wife, but it was only when Jessica threatened to leave him that he actually did it.

“I can’t keep living like this. I don’t know how you can.”

After Shane divorced his first wife and quickly married Jessica, he had asked about the carving of the great gray owl on the cabin deck.

“No way, the guy across the lake? I always want to check his stuff out when we drive past.”

Jessica looked now across the yard full of chainsaw carvings, recalling the day she had brought Shane to see them. At first, Shane seemed interested in buying one of them. But his mood changed when he saw Jessica and Tommy chatting by the workshop. They left in silence.

“Know him well, do ya?”

“His family has been on the lake as long as we have. We sorta grew up together.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Actually, he had a crush on me when we were teenagers.”

It had slipped out so easily that it took Jessica a while to realize that it was the first time she had lied to her husband. She knew that the truth of what had happened on the island, even after all these years, would have upset him. Shane seemed satisfied with her answer, though he never spoke to Tommy if he could help it after that. That even the lie was enough to make him jealous was a disappointing fact about him, but it at least vindicated her decision.

“What are you thinking about?” Tommy asked presently. Jessica checked her phone. The ticks were blue, which meant Shane had seen the message, but there was no reply.

“Wanna go out to eat?” she asked him. “Shane and I were supposed to get dinner, but I guess that isn’t happening.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m starving.”

 *

An hour later, they were at a country bar that served wings. Jessica watched Tommy’s hands and compared them to her husband’s. One pair was dark and scratched from woodworking while the other was pale and smooth from computer usage. Tommy’s were big and packed with jutting knuckles, but soft in how they handled things. Shane’s were slight, elegant, but certain. When they wanted something, they grabbed it.

At the height of her anxiety over their lies, those hands had calmed her. Like an animal going crazy in a storm. The stillness and confidence of his hands reassured her that they would be alright, that he was in control of everything. It had only ever been a problem for her.

“You seem sad,” Tommy said. His directness caught Jessica off-guard. Despite the precision of his carpentry, he had remained socially-awkward throughout his life. She sighed, putting the buffalo wing in her hand back in the basket.

“I’m not even worth the effort of a lie,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“He could have lied about where he is to make me feel better.”

“Maybe he’s got nothing to hide.”

“Maybe,” Jessica said. “Maybe I’m crazy.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s one or the other though, isn’t it?”

Tommy didn’t say anything. Jessica chugged the last of her Spotted Cow and ordered another one. She asked him why he had never married, and Tommy shrugged.

“Sorry, it’s none of my business,” she said.

“It’s okay. I think I’m probably too awkward. Women get uncomfortable around me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. You’re so gentle.”

“They probably think I’m miserable. I should probably try smiling sometime.”

Jessica laughed at that. She recalled those brief moments together on the island when they were fourteen. Her little brother telling her to go fuck herself as he paddled back to the dock. The knowledge that Tommy would do whatever she asked him to do. His eyes, unable to look at her face for too long.

“Can I see it?”

The complete silence of everything around them. The total sense of insulation from the outside world. Tommy obeyed and her eyes lowered. It always hung awkwardly to one side, already halfway to its maximum extent. He asked in the tiniest voice she’d ever heard if he could see her too. Jessica followed suit and they stood there for a long time, examining each other. She joked that they should watch out for ticks. There was never any touching, just looking and silence.

Jessica wondered now if Tommy thought about it every time he saw her. If he did, his face didn’t give away as much.

“I’m shitfaced,” Tommy said after a while.

“Me too,” Jessica said. “I am also shitfaced.”

They both knew that they weren’t really. It was just a fun thing to say.

“I’ve got some rum back home,” Tommy said. It was the same small voice from the island thirty years ago.

“Rum sounds like a good idea.”

“Always. It’s always a good idea.”

“Happy fucking anniversary to me,” Jessica said, before a sharp hiccup escaped her throat.

The two of them didn’t talk much in Tommy’s car. It was a twenty-minute drive back to the lake. Jessica had stopped checking her phone. She opened the car window and dangled her arm in the breeze. The sun had gone down but a gradient of residual yellows remained in the sky, juxtaposed with the first stars.

“I really am kinda shitfaced,” Tommy confessed.

They turned a corner on the empty road and that’s when he emerged. An old, pale buck stepped into the road like a shadow detaching itself from the trees, and Tommy slammed on the brake too late. The last thing Jessica remembered were the black streaks of blood on the windshield.

 *

The nearest hospital was forty-five minutes away, in Wausau. Around midnight, Shane came to pick her up.

“Will I need one of those cone things?” Jessica asked the nurse.

“A neck brace? No, I don’t think so, you should be alright ma’am. Try treating it with a pack of ice. I expect you will be fine in a few days,” the man answered. He nodded once at Jessica and then at Shane.

“Thank God you’re okay,” Shane said. Jessica couldn’t think of anything to say. Her skull still hurt, her neck was stiff. Shane asked if she could walk alright, and she said yes.

They didn’t speak after that until they arrived back at the cabin. Shane poured her a glass of water and she noticed that his hand was no longer so steady. That night she dreamt that she was interrogating him on what he had been doing that day. Shane kept answering with, “You know, the thing,” and it was both comedic and infuriating. When she woke the next morning, she was sure the dream had actually happened, even though it was ridiculous.

“Is this Kelsey’s vape pen?” Shane said out on the deck. Jessica had forgotten to put it back in her handbag. She shrugged, returning her attention to the lake. They were eating cornflakes in their pajamas and watching the loons. “Are you mad at me? You’ve been off all morning.”

Jessica regarded her husband and looked for evidence of deceit in his face. It was impossible, she thought. Shane never took off his mask. Cool gray eyes looked back at her.

“I had a dream you were lying to me.”

“And you’re mad at me for that?”

“Where were you yesterday? And don’t say the thing like I’m supposed to know what that is.”

Shane sighed, then offered her a contrite smile.

“You know the publication is behind schedule,” he said. “The sales team keep rejecting what the illustrators come up with. We’re using freelancers we’ve never worked with before. You know the schedule’s gone to shit lately. I was called into an emergency meeting, and it went on for ages. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“It’s only our anniversary, right?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. But c’mon, Jess. We can just celebrate it today instead.”

Jessica gazed into his eyes for a long time before nodding. Shane’s face relaxed into an easy smile, and he reached across the table to caress her hand. His hand felt cool and sure of itself again, comfortable in the knowledge that it could coax her and soothe her more potently than words ever could. Jessica stared at their hands clasped together on the table until Shane drew back. He cleared his throat.

“In the spirit of transparency,” Shane said then, “can I ask why you were in a car with Tommy the chainsaw guy?”

Jessica’s breathing stopped for a moment. She took a second to set her face the way she wanted it before looking him in the eye. She knew that he would be looking for clues himself.

“You ditched me, so we went to get wings.”

“Wings? That was it?”

“Well, and Tommy hit a deer on the way back. But yeah, that’s it.”

Shane regarded her for a moment longer before smiling again.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay.”

They returned to their cereal, looking out on the lake. It was shaping up to be a gorgeous day. It was warm but all around the lake the trees made an orchestra of themselves in the breeze. The hushing of innumerable branches layered on top of one another in a way that made Jessica want to go back to sleep. Shane made a comment about the weather, but she wasn’t paying attention. She looked out toward the island and closed her eyes.