Read Online The Liar's Wife by Mary Gordon - Free Book Online

She was listening to what they said as if they were people with whom she had no connection, from another very distant country, with another set of customs, fascinating, but far from her concern.
    â€œNo, no, Ashley’s mother was much too organized not to get properly divorced. You were organized in that department, Jocelyn, or I guess the family lawyer was. I was quite grateful at how easy it was.”
    She’d had to sue him for desertion, and she’d disliked that very much, because he hadn’t deserted her, she’d deserted him, although she found the word grotesque, as if they were infants left on some doorstep. She knew that he wouldn’t mind, though, and it was much easier. Quite easy, in fact, she remembered now.
    â€œNo, it was a lady named Melody, but we did not make beautiful music together,” Johnny said.
    Linnet raised her glass, and they clinked.
    â€œAnd me,” she said, “well I got out by the skin of my teeth, let me just tell you that. I don’t know what it was but for a while there, bipolar types just levitated towards me.”
    â€œI think you mean ‘gravitated,’ sweetheart,” Johnny said. “Although knowing you, you’re such an angel, maybe they did levitate.”
    â€œWhatever,” Linnet said. Jocelyn noticed she took no offense atJohnny’s correction of her diction. He had cared about words; she wondered if Linnet’s carelessness with language was troubling to him.
    â€œBut you let your friend Adelaide think you would get married someday.”
    â€œWell, we didn’t want to worry her. It would have just worried her if she knew about all our legal complications. And she was worried about what to do with the ring. She knew her daughter didn’t want it. She kept saying, ‘Rowena’s just too sporty for this kind of ring.’ ”
    â€œWhat she meant,” Linnet said, “was that she was a lesbian.”
    â€œRowena was a great girl, her and her friend Beth. We had some marvelous evenings with them, watching the sun go down with a glass of wine. It was great crack, great crack.”
    â€œThat’s another thing you can’t say, Johnny, like I’ve told you maybe like, what, a million times. You can’t say ‘great crack.’ People will think you’re a drug addict.”
    Jocelyn laughed out loud, a laugh she thought would have embarrassed almost everyone she knew. It would definitely have embarrassed Richard.
    She was feeling dizzier now, and her sense of well-being had suddenly disappeared, replaced by a disturbing notion that if she got up and tried to walk she would fall down. She remembered feeling that way all the time in the last days of her marriage to Johnny. It was navigating the choppy seas of what they would call stories and what she could only call lies. Not knowing what was firm, dependable ground, the ground of fact, the ground on which words and facts met—it had made her woozy; some days she felt she could do nothing but take to her bed. It was why she’d needed to leave him; she needed to be on firm ground again. And she had been, living her life, one foot before the other on the sweet firm earth. Until tonight. Once again she had to navigate the sea of untruths. Johnny telling the restaurant owner she had been Mick Jagger’s girlfriend. Pretending that she wasn’t more than slightly queasy about the way in which they’d got their “nest egg,” this extraordinarily valuable ring. He had pulled her back, back into those treacherous waters.
    They never called anything a lie, but they lied all the time, even to each other, even to their best friends. Lying to each other didn’t seem to tarnish their sense of friendship. But she had believed that if you were really friends with someone, you didn’t lie to them, and so if you lied to someone, that person could not be a real friend. She thought she had made real friendships