You couldn’t count all the liars. Admittedly, it would have been too difficult. Poolside at Emily’s swim practice, breaking voices of teenage coaches barking commands in the background, water lapping and heat rising, you tried. At first, you foolishly thought yourself capable of this accounting through memory alone. No pen. No paper. 

In the beginning, the list began to generate itself, an uninterrupted current of names coming fast. Fecund water following gravity through the garden hose. Mom, Dad, Jenny, Mrs. McKinsey, Nana Jo, Cousin Lara. This was just physics, bodies in motion.

Soon enough, five minutes? Ten minutes? Enough time for the swim team to line up, a row of thirty purple little t-shirts—soon enough your memory sprang leaks. Jeff pops up. He should have been after Dad, but that would change Lara’s place.

The glare of the sun blinds you for a moment. You make a visor gesture with your hand over your eyes. You scan the pool. The coach blows a whistle. You hear splashes. Diving practice.

Carol. You couldn’t remember if you had included her. Your instinct, rightly so, told you she hadn’t always been a liar. That came later didn’t it? After it was discovered Uncle Red had been abusing her. ‘Discovered’ that too was a sort of fabrication. Had there been a discovery or just a silent acknowledgment after Carol died? 

You remember distinctly the change in Carol from honest to liar.

It still leaves a queasiness. It was at the beach, the one you could walk to. As a child it had seemed far but later, when you were a bit older it was so close that no adult needed to accompany you. Back then gentle waves lapped at your toes. The sand was hot and you both took shelter in the sliver of shade provided by the lifeguard umbrella. You had wanted to share a secret with Carol. Do you remember what that was? It about that lifeguard you had kissed. Charley Royles, that was his name. 

Carol smiled at you, big floppy hat, sunglasses—and you thought ‘God, is she beautiful. God, I wish I were Carol.’ You envied her, don’t you remember? She was sophisticated. She was pretty and grown-up. But then she lifted her hand in a wave. It was subtle but unmistakable. She took him from you. That was the exact moment when you knew she was a liar and so was Charley.

You put aside your list for the time being and scan the pool and deck. The team photographer is having girls throw buckets of water on each other for the summer team photos. You think of “Girls Gone Wild.” But really these were just little girls, eleven and twelve years old. You try to wipe the thought out of your mind, but still you wait for boys to be similarly doused and photographed just so you know it wasn’t sexist. They never were. You cringe when they throw a bucket of water on your daughter, Emily. You are just about to get up and prevent it—no it wouldn’t be traumatic, she wouldn’t know the implications and you wouldn’t tell her either—would you? You’d never been that kind of mother. The kind to insinuate. 

A boy screams from the deep end, “Call 911!”

They threw the dummy doll in the water. Oh God. You are relieved. A lifeguard rescue drill.

Something about the false emergency summoned him, perhaps, the greatest liar of them all. The nameless one. The evil one. 

Where should he be recorded on the list? His lies were heavier, more demonic. That makes you notice that you hadn’t weighted any of the others. Up until that point, the organizing rule was simply chronology. 

You reexamine your strategy and employ another. A mental calculation was insufficient. Perhaps if you were alone on a life raft out on the south seas — perhaps then — you would have had to rely on your mental faculties, even honed them through memory exercises. But you know, that even if you had been floating out in the vast ocean alone — even then — you would have realized you needed a system to keep track of these liars. Notches on wood or fish scales, you would have found a way.

There were just too many. Lies, by their very nature, are complicated. You’ll have to start your list over again. 

A whistle blows and practice starts. The sun is beating down on the plastic lounger. Your eyes scan the pool deck and you notice that all the other mothers had somehow found shade, staked claim even. Emily stands tall, almost womanly, at twelve years old. She reaches her arm up and pulls it back with her other arm. Stretching.

You realize that she must have a list of liars too, that hers are ticking away too. You’ve tried to make sure Emily’s list was short. There were trains you stood in front of, lies you protected her from. You know there were some she keeps from you; she’s taken possession of them now. You tell yourself you’re a damned good mother. Damn it, you are.

Oh God but as she grows older, her list will grow longer.

Sitting there watching your daughter stretch and wait for warm ups, you once again begin the calculations. This time around Uncle Red’s lies stand out. Uncle Red. The evil one. That God-damned bastard has changed the algorithm.

Fuck.

You feel yourself getting overheated. You pull your hair back. When you bring your hands back down, the ponytail feels severe. You imagine what the other mothers see, particularly the overwhelmed one in a pale romper carrying the little red-haired baby. Maybe she’d passed a glance your way; you don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. But when you see her, you think perhaps you’ve pulled your hair back too much. You start to wonder if you look crazy. Skin too tight around the forehead, too much of ears.

You fumble in your purse for scratch paper. You need to write this list down, add names, cross out, draw arrows. 

You smile at that same overwhelmed mother. She’s trying to sit down and adjust the diaper bag. You find the pen and practically let out a cry in relief. Pen and paper. This is good —your mind is in motion. It’s not a list, it’s an equation.

First, you write the list of names. You create symbols and icons to code and reorder. There’s a hierarchy to your list of liars. You couldn’t blame Carol after you found out about her father. So you start to cross Carol off but you stop mid-erase. Was that it or was it that you didn’t blame her because you had won? Oh, don’t you remember.

Carol. You want to cross her off because you can’t blame her for her lies. Yes. That was true, you don’t blame her because she ended up losing everything. You grew up and hardly even remember Charley Royles. It wasn’t long after Carol took him from you that everyone began to call her a slut. 

You shake your head, look up and smile at the dark haired mother who’d sat down at the plastic lounger next to you.

“Hot” she says. She smiles and makes an exaggerated fanning motion with her hand.

“Yes,” you say but you’re dazed. “It is.”

You smile at her but don’t take the conversation any further. You know where it would go. It would have been a long rambling, waste of time about hot days, making lunches, kids growing up fast. Jesus Christ, you just want a minute to calculate this stuff.

You turn back to your work and recheck the names. You honestly don’t know if you should keep Carol on the list at all. To think of it, her getup was absurd; her signature floppy hat and glasses were ludicrous, not sophisticated at all. Poor Carol. She died of an unusual “disease” while you continued to sit amongst liars at Thanksgiving and Fourth of July get-togethers.

This list has to be finished. There in the hot sun, mothers unwrapping cheese sticks and concoctions of God knows what kind of soy wheatgrass smoothies, you are determined to get it all done once and for all.

You look like every other mother at the goddamned summer swim practice.

In so little time, you’d really done a remarkable job. Your page is covered with arrows, numbers and formulas. 2x 3 (Susan Gippeyo). X’s were calculated on a 1 to 100 scale. Anything under ten was petty compared to say Aunt Elizabeth who was a 60 xxxx or1. The evil one who although was incalculable was instead given a value of 100 x to the 100th power 81.

The page in front of you is frightening.

You feel crazy. Naturally anyone would agree if they saw what you were doing. You half cover your notebook with your beach towel and press on, invigorated by your record keeping despite its appearance of something worse.

You need more space to lay out the sheets of paper so you can move the names around. The car. You’ll say you were waiting in the car for Emily to finish practice, that the heat was unbearable on that particular afternoon. 

You pull the papers from the notebook and lay them out on the back seat. You can barely decipher the chicken scrawl, the x’s, the obviously incalculable scale. You should remember the scale, shouldn’t you?

You should do one final inventory of the liars. It’s a relief to be almost done, God knows.

Your eyes pass over the name Crystal Reindo (remember you had categorized then by age. Yours and theirs?) Crystal was 7 at the time. So were you. Mrs. Reindo, Crystal’s mother, was on the next page three quarters of the way down. Could you really call Crystal’s denial a lie? Her little voice swearing to God, on her brother’s life that she hadn’t stolen your pen collection. But you knew, didn’t you.

Yes. You did.

You knew if you opened that Fisher price camping backpack, still plastic smelling and clean—you knew you’d see them right there where she’d hidden them after she had stolen them from you. 

Was her crime a lie or theft? You had to stop and think. What the hell difference did it make? But, it did make a difference for your purposes. You decided that technically yes Crystal should be on your list of liars. But really wasn’t it Mrs. Reindo who was the liar? After all she told you to leave Crystal alone and go home, that there was nothing in the back pack. But you weren’t going to have it .

“Look in your back pack!” you screamed. Even your mother, who was on your side, said, “You didn’t have to scream that loud.”  She had said that when you were walking back across the street to your house. You remember that don’t you?

You felt like your pens were ruined. In the tiniest way you felt ruined — the way you were ruined after that car ride with the evil one.

Finally, you remember. August 1, 1983. Uncle Red. Bloodshot eyes and a failed deception — Wrigley’s Doublemint on top of rancid brandy. You should have been frightened of him but you never were. You don’t know why. His fists pounded but seemed doughy once he opened the door. That was the little apartment your mother rented after your parents divorced. What did you care that she was never home any more? If you are honest with yourself you liked that kind of freedom at fourteen.

No one would deny you grew up fast that summer. Your mother didn’t know you had a fake id and spent your nights sneaking into bars. She’ll never knew that you had started taking money from her. You were saving up, weren’t you? You were going to go to California with that girl Erin Lawrence. You’d always had a theory about Erin. Your theory was that she could make you both famous. You remember what you told her, don’t you? You told her what happened with Uncle Red.

You stop writing. For a little while you are frozen. In shock? You don’t know.

Then a voice inside you awakens. Jesus Christ you are at Emily’s swim practice!

You scramble and gather the papers, shove them into your purse.

You look out the window. For a moment you think you’ve lost track of time but really you’re just in time. Your watch says 11:00. Emily’s swim class ends at 11:00. Your hands are shaking. You stare out the windshield. You want to cry but it’s not the time.

You see Emily making her way down the cement path to the parking lot. She has a bright blue beach towel wrapped around her. She waves to you and you lift you hand and wave back. 

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Part of our Summer 2025 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through August 31, 2025.

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