The Lie Keeper

A Lie Keeper arrives at the door shortly after June’s 17th birthday.

She sees him approach from her window, unmistakable in his standard issue costume; a stiff black suit, white shirt, gray tie, and the trademark yellow tinged glasses that will distort the color of his eyes to a monsooned gray.

He looks younger than most to June as he nears the house, though it’s hard to tell with his regulatory bald dome, gleaming beneath a slick of oil or sweat.

She scurries downstairs where her mother is also watching him approach from the living room.

“Tsk tsk,” she clucks, “Doesn’t he look young? I swear some of these Department representatives can’t be much older than you. So sad, kids with no place else to go. Cleaning up other people’s dirty laundry.”

“Some people want to be Lie Keepers,” June says. “Some of the kids at school talk about it. They say you get to travel and know everybody’s secrets.”

June’s mother snorts, “Well I don’t think it’s any life. Not a life I would want for you, anyways. Not when you could be safe at home with me.”

June nods and heads to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water just as the doorbell rings.

The Lie Keeper enters and is guided into the living room where he hefts a briefcase onto the coffee table. June’s mother flits around for a moment offering him tea, coffee and tinned cookies, which he blessedly refuses, and then settles onto the couch in a nervous puff. June watches from the doorway, half hidden behind the frame.

The Lie Keeper takes his place on the divan opposite her mother. He tries to adjust his long legs awkwardly, his knees resting above the coffee table and his pant legs hiking enough to reveal a frayed edge of sock. It reminds June that he is, in fact, human.

“Ok...” trails June’s mother. She glances suggestively at the brief case but doesn’t attempt to continue. The Lie Keeper clears his throat.

“Which if you is June Masterson?” He looks at June. She shrinks back behind the door frame more, willing herself flat or invisible.

“That can’t be right,” her mother says urgently.

“It is.”

“She’s just 17. She’s not even of age!”

“A debt can no longer be paid,” the Lie Keeper says vaguely, June almost thinks he might shrug his shoulders. But he remains rigid in his spot.

“Well I’m staying right here,” her mother responds contemptuously.

“Not allowed. The recipient may only counsel with others once the offer has been made. And no counsel may approach the Lie Keeper. That is the rule.” He speaks as though reciting from a paper.

June’s mother rolls her eyes viciously, “I know, I know the damn rules. Jeez,” she meets June in the doorway, gathers their hands up to her chest, “I’ll wait in the garden when you need me. This is normal. It’s ok.” Her mother kisses June’s knuckles and then turns to leave through the kitchen, shooting an icy glare at the Lie Keeper and rattling the sliding door pointedly on her way out.

June sinks into the couch, tidal waves of nervous energy roll forth from her stomach and crash through her body. The pins and needles of anticipation scrape against the inside of her chest, the back of her throat, the crooks of her elbows.

“June Masterson,” the Lie Keeper begins in his quicksand monotone. “Someone has lied to you. They can no longer pay their debts upon the lie. Therefore, you are owed a truth.”

“From who?” June asks quickly. He looks at her warily, almost piteously, and continues with his scripted speech.

“Under conditions of the Oath of Lies, you may choose to receive your payment in truth or equivalent monetary value, as paid to the Department of Lies by the Liar.” The Lie Keeper leans forward and unsnaps the briefcase, lifting the lid so that he can inspect the contents. “The lie in my possession amounts to $20,000, USD. You have an hour to decide, and may spend a quarter of it with a counsel of your choosing.” The Lie Keeper spins the case around to face her. In two satin-lined compartments, side by side, are an envelope and a small, black notebook.

The envelope contains the money. The book contains the truth.

June’s mother had been lied to once. A Lie Keeper had come to the house, wearing the same crisp suit as the one sitting in the living room now. He had made a similar offer to her mother in a stern tone. She had picked the small black book with little hesitation - her lie had only been worth a hundred some-odd dollars.

As soon as the Lie Keeper had shuffled off, June and her mother had eagerly opened the neat, typewritten truth. An employee at the small market where June’s mother worked had pilfered prescription pills from the pharmacy section. June’s mother had never known.

Never known because the woman had hired an Eraser, a nickname for the other bespectacled, suit-wearing representatives from the Department of Lies. These men came when you least expected it - as you were rounding the corner hurriedly on your way home or turning to glance out your window in a moment of reflection - and blasted you with a series of micro, infrared and radio waves that clouded your memory and replaced it with a whispery new truth. It was a device developed as a torture method by the government, so the story went, but had soon proved too potentially-profitable to keep from the unwashed masses. Thus, the Department of Lies was born.

Though it was not officially part of the government, everyone knew where the money went and came from. At the Department you could pay a monthly fee – the number dependent upon the arbitrarily judged “gravity of the lie” – for someone in a suit to guard your deception. Once the liar’s indiscretion had been erased from the memories of those it affected, only they and the Lie Keeper, with his black book and black shoes, knew the truth.

That is, until the liar could not pay.

“You have to take the money!” June’s mother crows out in the garden. “Do you know how much $20,000 is?”

“Yes, I know,” June snaps. “But don’t you think something worth $20,000 is worth knowing about? What if someone did something terrible to me?”

“Who?” Her mother snaps back. “You have been safe at home with me your entire life. Do you think I would let some boogeyman come snatch you up without my knowing? I would be shrieking down the street, they’d have had to erase the memory of everyone on the block. I’d make sure of that!”

And June knows this to be true. Her mother is hysterical about her whereabouts, never even allowing her to walk to the bus stop on her own.

But something bothers her. A gnawing thought that had begun the minute she saw the Lie Keeper’s gleaming head bobbing down the street. It’s the same thought she had had when her mother’s Lie Keeper had arrived, and it had been simmering in the further recesses of her mind, threatening to bubble over, since then.

June’s father had never been around. He had never known she existed, and so he had never existed to her. But at some point June had realized that she could never remember remembering him.

She stares at her mother now, wondering if she should ask about him again. Whenever she pries about him, it always leads to tears. Sometimes, if she’s lucky, a few stories might bubble over with her mother’s heartbreak. Like the one about him getting a pancake stuck to the ceiling or another about their long climb down the side of a dust-choked mountain path, only finding their way home with the help of a rogue black Labrador. But usually when she asks about her father, all June gets is her mother’s sorrow.

Her mother now sinks into the wooden bench her father had built, in another story from when they first bought the house with the garden and thought they would live there, just the two of them, forever. Her mother looks tired, her bun is coming loose and her crow’s feet are visible in the late afternoon sun. June sits down next to her and takes her hand.

“Do you think it’s about dad?” she whispers. Her mother looks at her, startled, then closes her eyes. Two perfect tears escape down her cheeks. She doesn’t respond, but lays her head on June’s shoulder. And June knows, in her heart, what she has long suspected.

Her mother is always so fiercely protective and guarded. She keeps them together, just her and June in the house with a garden. Like a rock in a river, stable and contained. June doesn’t want that to change. She doesn’t want the rock to crumble and the house to float away. And whatever is in that book, whatever lie her father told is the only thing she can think of to threaten that.

Through the window she can see the Lie Keeper sitting rigidly on the divan. It seems like he’s staring straight at her, but he doesn’t move. She immediately resents him. Resents him for knowing her mother’s pain. Resents him for knowing whatever reason her father left or continues to leave or didn’t want her or didn’t want her mother. She hates him. She hates them both.

June settles back in to the couch and clutches the hem of her dress with sweating palms. The Lie Keeper looks at her unwaveringly.

“I choose the money,” she says. She doesn’t meet his eyes - his weird, distorted gray eyes. In her peripherals he nods and reopens the case. The envelope, swollen and gaping at the flap, lands with a greedy thump on the table.

June keeps her gaze transfixed on the carpet in front of her, where, startlingly, the Lie Keeper’s shiny shoes appear before her.

He holds out his hand for her to shake and she looks up at him. From this angle she can see up his glasses. Can see that behind the fuzzy frames his eyes are brown and warm, like a doe’s, with deep purple bags beneath them. And behind the warmth is something else. Surprise, or admonishment, or fear, she can’t quite tell.

June meets his hand with hers, and instead of shaking it he pulls her lightly up from her seat, not releasing her hand once she’s standing.

“Congratulations, Miss Masterson. It’s quite a bit of money,” he says.

And then, all at once, his buttoned-up sheen disappears. She sees him as he truly is; just a boy with brown eyes and frayed socks forced to bear whatever sad or dark or twisted burden in his book that she is choosing to ignore.

He grabs her hand tight and pulls her to him. Into the pocket of her sweater he slips the little black book.

Panicked, like that look in his eyes she hadn’t been able to place, he whispers in her ear, “You made the wrong choice.”

She tries to twist to look at him, her mouth agape, but he holds her arm firm against him. To give her both the truth and the money is highly banned. She can’t imagine what will happen to him. To her.

He pulls back suddenly, all buttons and polish again. His eyes flicker behind her, at the garden where her mother is sitting. Then he pushes his glasses up his nose, distorting his eyes once again, and heads toward the door. His hand on the doorknob, he turns back. June stares, glued to her spot, her truth burning slowly into her gut.

“Read it,” he says, “Then run.”