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A Novel
by Sarah Manguso
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He said he'd dated two women at once, one year, and that they'd found out about each other.
He said that his last relationship had died a slow death and ended in guarded friendship, but I knew it might yet be there, steering him.
He said he'd known right away that he'd spend the rest of his life with me. Then he said, That's what's called showing one's hand, or putting all one's cards on the table, and then I said, I'll totally marry you.
* * *
Back in the city, where we both lived, providentially on the same subway line, we visited each other's apartments. His was in a cruddy row house in a neighborhood that hadn't been gentrified yet; all his neighbors were in their eighties. His apartment, a top floor walk-through, was dotted with glass vases from rummage sales, stones and seashells, an old edition of Poe nibbled beautifully by bookworms. He crouched next to some bookshelves he'd made and plugged something into the wall outlet and then looked up at me. In a translucent orange vase the size of a pineapple, a ball of wadded-up Christmas lights was suddenly aglow.
John said that we had to be discreet while walking in his neighborhood. He hadn't told his ex-girlfriend about me, and I said that that wasn't good enough, and he listened to me and then rescinded the rule.
But Naomi still called him every night. He claimed she was suicidal and that it was his responsibility to save her.
She's ... unstable, he said, the little pause making the second word even darker, more dangerous.
I said that he was valuing her feelings above mine. I said that she couldn't control our relationship with her phone calls and suicide threats, and I asked John to limit his communication with her.
I couldn't sleep unless no one was touching me, but John couldn't sleep unless he was holding on to me. Tight.
I wish I were more like you, he said.
Then I found his Friendster profile, which he'd logged into within twenty-four hours, and which listed him as thirty-four and single.
My mother said that John wasn't ready to settle down right away because he hadn't expected to meet me.
Then John emailed me and said that Naomi had found out about me, that she would come over that weekend for the final breakup, after which he'd change his profile.
I wrote back, I'm not going to have a meltdown and break up with you. You're going to have to work consistently and effortfully to sabotage this. It's not impossible, but I don't think you have the heart to do it. At least I really, really hope you don't.
I signed it, I love you, Mumbun. Mumbun, our pet name for each other, derived very early on from Bunny. John, my tender arctic hare.
That night he visited, heartbroken over something else—a friend had lost his dead father's jigsaw and bought him a used one to replace it, even though he'd requested that she buy a new one, and then she'd lied and said he'd never said it. I petted him and massaged his back and listened to his sadness, and I sensed that he was learning.
The next morning he sexily disassembled my old inkjet printer, looking for parts he could use to make a robot for a photography project. I was revising a book review. It was late morning when the mail came. Mostly junk. Two magazines. A letter.
I put the magazines on the desk, put the junk mail in the bin under the kitchen sink, and opened the letter from the Akadimía. When I read that I'd won the Akadimía Prize I went cold, knowing I'd have to conceal my pride when I told John. Affectless, he said, I want to be as successful in my field as you are in yours. Then he put down his little tools and took me out for brunch. We waited forty minutes for a table while we both stewed, him about not having won the photography fellowship, me about wishing we'd eaten oatmeal at home for free.
* * *
Fifteen years earlier, when I'd gone away to college, I wore a fur coat I'd bought for ten dollars at a thrift store. It was Persian lamb, the fur rotting off the skin. I used reeking permanent black markers to color in the skin as the fur fell off. My mother had showed me how to do it.
Excerpted from Liars by Sarah Manguso. Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Manguso. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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