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Lies My Wife Told Me

A true story about a magic box and a broken butt

The first time I met my wife she lied to me — repeatedly and outrageously.

It was in a diner. Pitchers of beer were involved. These may have affected my judgment.

I had started the night in pursuit of a different woman. At this point, I hadn’t met the woman who would become my wife. I had no idea what I was missing.

Both my wife and the other woman I was pursuing were aspiring dancers at the college where I studied journalism. They, along with another dancer friend of mine, had been in a show I’d just seen. It was the first time I remember seeing either of them.

The dance was based on a Kurt Vonnegut story called “Long Walk to Forever”. The story is about two friends who grew up together — a boy and a girl. They haven’t seen each other for several months. The boy is in the army and he hears the girl is getting married to someone else. He realises, possibly too late, that he loves her, so he goes AWOL to try to change her mind.

The piece was staged with a boy actor and a girl actor on opposite sides of the stage. Neither moved throughout the performance. They just read the dialogue aloud. Between them, three women dressed as brides danced to illustrate the story.

The three brides were Dorothy, Maria, and Vicki.

Dorothy was the stereotypically beautiful blonde buxom bride. I’d been in an acting class with her and we were firmly in the friend zone.

Maria was the sexy bride. She was tall and thin with obsidian black hair. She was of mixed Asian heritage and had a strong femme-fatale vibe — dangerous and cruel.

Vicki was the goofy red-headed bride. If this was a romantic comedy, she would have been the female lead — the pretty, spunky girl everyone liked — the one with brains.

All three were beautiful and talented. And the goofy bride was hilarious. At one point in the show, the female protagonist starts to suspect that the boy is here because he loves her. Vicki, the goofy bride, breaks away from the other two brides, runs across the stage and leaps on the male actor from behind. Her arms and legs wrap around him and she peers over his shoulder with a joyous grin.

The actor doesn’t react, and the next line of dialogue he reads is dismissive, as if — no, he’s just here for the wedding. Vicki’s expression changes to disappointment and she slides down his body and lands in a heap at his feet. The audience bursts into laughter.

Any sensible person could see this was the girl for me. But, being young and awash with hormones, the one who really caught my eye was Maria. Such sexiness! Such disdain! I longed for her to crush my heart. I had to meet her.

Fortunately, I didn’t have long to wait. Dorothy introduced me to Maria a couple of days later. We seemed to hit it off. We talked for a while about the show and the story it was based on. This led to a discussion about what books we liked. I told her I’d just read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and loved it.

“Cool! I always wanted to read that,” she said.

The next day I gift-wrapped my copy of the book to give to her. One of my nerdy hobbies at the time was origami — the Japanese art of paper folding. My piece de resistance was a circus elephant standing on one foot. This struck me as the perfect garnish for my gift — a hugely heavy animal, an elephant, being as light and graceful as a ballerina. Genius! I made one using pink paper and attached it to the gift.

The next time I saw Maria I gave it to her.

“Uh… Thanks,” she said.

“Did you see the elephant?” I said. “It’ll make a lot more sense when you unwrap it.”

“Uh, yeah. Cool,” she said. She didn’t seem interested in opening it just then. Instead, she put it in her bag and dug out a pack of cigarettes.

“I have to get going,” she said. “Thanks for the whatever-it-is.” She slung her bag over her shoulder, put a cigarette in her mouth and headed out the door. “See you sometime.”

“Right. See you,” I said.

About a week later I stopped in at a local diner with a friend. Well, I say “friend,” but I barely knew him. He was the younger brother of a good friend of mine. He was staying on my friend’s couch and driving him crazy.

My friend, Dave, had a paper due the next morning and begged me to get his brother out of his apartment for the evening. The younger brother’s name was Tim. He was about 18. Dave was in his late 20s. I was somewhere in between.

And the place was officially a diner, but it was more like a bar. Not much food was consumed there, but they did have cheap beer by the pitcher. It was a popular haunt for students at the college and was packed that night. A bunch of the dancers were there, including Maria.

There was always a crowd of friends and admirers around Maria. The booth she was sitting in was packed, and a couple of guys had pulled up chairs to the end of the table — no room for me and Tim. There was space at the next booth over, though. Two girls were sitting there. I recognised one as the goofy red-haired bride from the show I’d seen. I didn’t recognise the other one.

“You can join us if you’d like,” said the one I’d never seen before.

“Thanks,” I said. “We’d love to.” Tim and I sat down.

“I’m Veronica,” she said. “This is Vicki.”

“We’re identical twins!” said Vicki. Vicki was the red-haired dancer.

Although we were all sitting down so I couldn’t tell for sure, Vicki looked to be about half a head taller than Veronica. Vicki’s hair was curly and strawberry blonde. Veronica had straight blonde hair and a narrow mouth with thin lips. Vicki’s mouth was wider and her lips were fuller. They looked nothing like each other.

“That right?” I said.

“Absolutely!” said Veronica. Vicki nodded vigorously. I noticed there was an empty pitcher of beer on the table. I flagged a waitress down and ordered another one and a couple more glasses.

“This is Tim.” I indicated my friend. “And I’m Chris. We’re not twins.”

“I can see that,” said Vicki. “You look nothing like each other.”

“Um. No offence,” I said. “But the two of you aren’t exactly identical yourselves.”

“Really?” said Vicki. “Maybe it’s the glasses. Veronica, take off your glasses!” The two girls leaned across the table and pressed the sides of their heads together, facing us.

I laughed. “Sorry. I just don’t see it.”

“Okay, maybe we’re not identical,” admitted Vicki, “but we are twins. What do you call twins that aren’t identical?”

“Fraternal.”

“That’s what we are!” she said. “Fraternal twins!”

“Really?” I wasn’t buying it. “What year were you born?”

“1966,” said Vicki.

Veronica nodded. “1966,” she said.

“Prove it,” I said. “Show me some ID.”

“You don’t trust us?” asked Veronica.

“Not for a minute.”

Vicki and Veronica both got out their driver’s licenses. Vicki’s showed she was, indeed, born in 1966. Veronica’s said 1963.

“You were born three years apart!” I said.

“It was a very difficult birth,” said Vicki.

I looked at her sceptically.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re just sisters, but we’re as close as twins.”

I checked their driver’s licenses again. They had different last names. Veronica’s last name was Thompson and Vicki’s last name was Thoms. This is where the beer must have started to affect my brain because I believed what they told me next.

“We’re half-sisters,” said Veronica.

“We’ve got the same dad,” said Vicki.

“But your last names are different,” I said.

“Our dad really hated Veronica’s mom,” said Vicki.

“Oh yeah, with a passion! It was scary,” said Veronica.

“So when Veronica’s mom decided to keep the name Thompson after they got divorced — my Dad’s name — he was livid! He was so angry he shortened his name from Thompson to Thoms.”

“And that’s why we have different last names,” said Veronica. “But we’re still sisters.”

“Well, half-sisters,” corrected Vicki.

Call me gullible, but I believed this final version of their relationship. I figured there must be some kernel of truth beneath all the lies. And the story made sense to my beer-addled brain. So I accepted it. It was time to move on to other topics.

“I saw your show the other night,” I said to Vicki. “You were one of the brides, right?”

“Yes. That was me,” she said. “Hey! Are you the guy who gave Maria the book?”

“Oh, yeah. Did she tell you about it?”

“She told everyone.” Vicki looked a little embarrassed. “I thought it was really sweet. The elephant was cool.”

I got the sense from this that Maria hadn’t thought the elephant or the gift was cool. I felt a bit embarrassed as well.

“I’m glad you liked it, at least,” I said.

“I loved it!” she said. “Where did you get the elephant? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I made it,” I said. “If you want, I could make something for you.”

“Don’t you need special paper or something?” she asked.

I held up one of the paper placemats from the table. “This is probably a bit thick for something like an elephant, but I could probably manage a swan or a magic box.”

“Oooh! Do a magic box!” said.

“Ironic that it’s too thick for an elephant,” said Veronica.

I folded the placemat diagonally to make a square and tore off the excess. “Turn around for a second. I’m going to write a secret message. The message is what makes it magic.”

Vicki turned around and covered her eyes.

I wrote “You have a beautiful eye!” in the center of the piece of paper and folded it up into a little box. The proper origami name for what I made is a water bomb. It’s a paper cube about 2 inches on each side with a small hole in the top.

Traditionally, you’re supposed to use the hole to fill the bomb with water and then throw it at someone. But we were in Northern Canada. It was winter and about ten below zero outside. I suspected this would not be a successful courtship technique, and I was starting to think this might be a girl I wouldn’t mind courting.

“Done!” I announced.

Vicki turned around. “Cool!”

I handed it to her. “This box can reveal the truths of the universe. Just look in the little hole in the top.”

Vicki held the box up to her eye and laughed. “It says I have a beautiful eye! What kind of great cosmic truth is that?”

“Well, it has to go on what it can see at the time. Now that you’ve moved your eye away, there’s probably a message about how we are all just specks of dust in a cosmic soup or something.”

“Cosmic soup?” asked Veronica.

“So, it pretty much just says the same thing to everyone,” said Vicki.

“Oh no,” I said. “It’s never used the word ‘beautiful’ before.” I took the box from her and held it up to my eye. “Yep. What I see is just ‘you have an eye’.”

At this point, Tim spoke up for pretty much the first time since we’d sat down. “Let me see!”

I handed it to him and he peered into the hole. “It tells me I have a beautiful eye,” he said. I was starting to understand why my friend wanted this guy out of his apartment. I handed the box back to Vicki.

“Thanks so much for this,” she said. “It’s really sweet.”

Once the diner closed, the dancers headed off to another bar. Tim and I headed back to Dave’s apartment. I was buzzing! I’d just met this great girl and had a great night out. I was so excited I did something very foolish.

A couple of years ago, I had belonged to a gymnastics team at uni. I wasn’t very good, but, with a bit of a run-up, I could do a front somersault in the air and land on my feet. I was in such a good mood I decided I would do one right there on the frozen, ice-covered concrete sidewalk leading to my friend’s apartment building.

It had been a while since I’d attempted one. I wasn’t exactly dressed for the activity. And I was a little drunk.

I recalled my training though — in particular, my coach emphasising how important it was to focus on getting good height as well as rotation.

I ran and jumped and drove my arms up the way I’d been taught and I got great height! But I realised as I started to rotate I wasn’t going to make it around to my feet. I stayed tucked and landed on my butt. A trip to the hospital and an x-ray later, I found out I’d broken my coccyx.

A few blocks away, at roughly the same time, Vicki, on her way to the next pub, slipped on some ice and landed on her butt as well. She was still carrying the paper box I’d made in her hand and was amazed that she hadn’t crushed it when she fell. She took it as a sign we were meant for each other and that the box truly was magic.

She may have been a little drunk also.

A couple of years later, after Vicki and I had been living together for a couple of months, she came home from class one day and I told her that her sister had called.

“I don’t have a sister,” she said.

“Well your half-sister, then — Veronica.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh my God! You didn’t really believe we were sisters, did you?”

“Uh… yeah. Well, half-sisters. I thought you had the same Dad.”

“You are such a doofus!” she said. “But I love you.”