Over-Easy

The story comes to a close.

His mother (who I met once over the summer) emailed me last night. Had I talked to him recently? She didn’t know if we were still together, or if we still talked, or anything. But she was worried because of their lack of communication and was curious (though without wanting to pry) to find out if I knew where he was and if he was alright.

Geez, I thought, had he disappeared completely?

I emailed her back and told her most of my story, about how he disappeared at the end of January after telling me he was working at a restaurant that I later discovered didn’t exist, and how more lies that he had told me earlier began to come to light. The information didn’t help on his whereabouts, and I apologized for this, but I felt it necessary to tell her what I could.

Her reply began: Gosh, Natalie. I’m so sorry for all of this. He has a real problem with lying. She continued on this train of thought, telling me how this issue has been ongoing between him and both friends and family. She had hoped that maybe he had changed, that he was honest to me in our relationship, but this was obviously not the case.

A month and a half ago, when he told me he was leaving for his new job, he left on a plane for Las Vegas. He had been planning this move for several weeks beforehand. He had told his mother that he had told me, and only now did she realize that she should’ve checked in earlier.

Everything started to crumble.

There was never a house that he was going to buy. He said that the deal didn’t go through because he lost his job and couldn’t afford it, but the deal didn’t go through because there was no deal. Because he had never planned on buying a house except when he was telling me about our future together.

He did lose his job, although not for the reason he claimed. He lost it, as I learned through the bartender, because of his excessive alcohol use.

Yes, his mother confirmed, he has an alcohol problem. And in all likelihood he was the one who drank the liquor that went missing from my apartment over break, the liquor he assured me he wouldn’t have touched. I believed him because I wanted to be able to trust him.

There was never a car that he totaled two winters ago while driving down a twisted road, and there was never a prospect of buying a new car so that we wouldn’t have to take public transportation everywhere. This was never going to happen because he didn’t even have a license; it had been taken away after so many drunk driving charges.

I asked: did she still live in Portland? Because he had told me in January that his mother and sister were moving. He was away from me so much when I returned in January because he was spending so much time with them. Not only where they leaving, but his mother had just been diagnosed with late stage breast cancer and in all probability he would never see her again.

But no, she was still living in Portland and had no plans to relocate. I didn’t ask about the cancer but I knew it was a lie.

It was hard not to believe some of the things he told me, partly because they seemed too far-fetched to be lies (like a temp job making chainsaws) and partly because I brushed off the tiny bit of doubt that I did have as my natural, and usually unnecessary, skepticism.

I believed him because he told me things that one simply doesn’t lie about.

I asked his mom about his past, if the traumatic story he told me was true and therefore could perhaps be used as a reason (although not an excuse) for his compulsive behaviour, or if it was just another product of his imagination. She told me that his childhood was normal and he was happy growing up; only when he started hanging out on the streets did he begin to change. He began to carry guilt, although she never knew why.

Did he tell you he was married and divorced? He has two kids he never sees.

Yes, I replied, he told me that he had been married, had kids, and had gotten divorced. But he also told me that his ex-wife and kids died in a car crash some time later.

Pause. Blink. Pause.

There’s no way to explain my complete and utter disbelief. I spent the day switching off between finding the entire situation hilarious and being totally shell-shocked.

I said to myself yesterday afternoon “life cannot possibly get any weirder” and then it did. But now the only possible direction life can go is up. Right?

Posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 8:33 pm. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.