Owning the Lies

My sisters,

We are so close, Irish sisters (really Italian-Scot) we call ourselves sometimes, and yet . . .

We grew up in a house filled with more lies than furniture. If anything, the furniture we had was less real than the lies. A living room set kept in storage for a year and a half so Dad would not know Mom had bought it. When it arrived (must have been paid off), Dad didn’t even notice. That part was true. Remember how he walked in that evening and looking around the room, said, Looks great in here. And then went to his study until dinner.

We learned to lie to fight for ourselves—there were so many obstacles to impeding our success: school administrators, teachers, standardized tests, the popular kids, church, Dad, who was too cheap to pay for private school as Mom begged him to do since the public schools were not placing us in the gifted programs even though each of us were (and still are) gifted. In middle school you both dressed for public school every morning and changed into your private school uniforms once Dad left for work unless he offered to drive you to school. Once he dropped you of at the public middle school, you both would change into your uniforms in the bathroom knowing Mom would be there soon to take you to the private school she secretly sent you to by working nights. Dad never knew of the deception. Lies are so easy to perform.

Not long ago, I asked Dad if he knew, about the lies, about the deceptions, about the abuse. The hairbrushes that kept us home from school so we could clean them, the days spent in the basement cowering below the foot-stamped ceiling, the yelling, and tears that shattered our innocent ears.

He did.

He stayed to protect us as no court was going to give him full custody in the 1970s.

I believe him. I am glad I asked before he decided to take a leave from life’s realities and enjoy the simple pleasures of sleeping all day on a leather couch covered in plastic so the cats can’t sour it with their cat smells. His photographic memory is only a memory now.

Who do you love more, Mom or Dad? I asked you both the evening after the church picnic. We had been waiting all morning for Dad to get back from the lab to take us to the event, but he was late and not calling to explain why. Dressed in our best, we knew if he didn’t make an appearance soon, we’d be targets for her wrath, the tension in her shoulders peeling through the checkered sleeves of her pinafore dress. Wrath came and went, the slurs hit and split, we hid each other behind each other. Where was Dad?

He arrived and we cleaned ourselves up and we went to the picnic and scattered to the other kids’ games. I looked over at Mom talking with the priest. She smiled her big, beautiful smile (she was and still is for an 80-year-old quite beautiful) at me. My mind flipped to babyhood when huge ocean waves tried to drown me and I looked to her, her laughing face. I must have been cute, but I know I was scared. A fear that fed me all growing up.

Dad, of course!

I looked at the doorway and saw her walk away, her shoulders crouched in knowing what she did, what she was capable of. Some people should never have children.

I never did.

***

Still, she gave to us, she sacrificed for us, everything, her career, her health, her marriage. Growing up near the Harvard campus in a three-bedroom flat with her parents and her four siblings, she vowed her children would go to a school like that, and we did. She sang to us, she took us to soccer practice and art lessons, she worked nights for US$7 an hour to send us to private schools. She took us to Bonwit Teller and Saks Fifth Avenue to get the most up-to-date fashions. She stood up to the classroom bullies, the negligent teachers, the neighborhood nags for us.

We always understood the complexity of her situation and forgave her every time and always will. She was a loving though volatile mother who was trapped in a huge and nearly empty house with three daughters and no help. Far from her family, closer to Dad’s, hence vacations were spent with his family on the beach, with her mother-in-law who was angry that her eldest son married a WASP.

Did I ever tell you both this?

I was resting in the kids’ beach house bedroom in the middle of the day, watching Nana kick Mom’s shoes away from the back door. I closed my eyes when Nana came in and sat on the bed. I felt her hand touch my shoulder and when I opened my eyes, she asked me would you like to live with me? I didn’t know what to say. My fever pounding my head. I awoke a few hours later to find Mom sitting on the bed stroking my hair. Who would you prefer to live, G, me, or your grandmother?

You, I said. You. Why?

****

Or how about this one? A secret and a lie.

I was standing outside of my sorority with my British boyfriend who had just told me he loves me. I felt coy, not sure what to say, so I told him about my parents. They have been married for twenty-two years, they hold hands in the car; they bake pizzas together every Friday night, I want to be in love like they are for the rest of my life. He kissed me good-bye. I never saw him again.

After dinner that night, I was called to the phone.

G, you have to come home. Mom and Dad are getting a divorce.

I took leave from Berkeley (okay, not Harvard but good enough) so I could help Mom with the divorce. We found a lawyer, a job for me, and I did not speak to Dad for 6 months. I had taken sides, but I still needed money for when I would return to school so I needed to make peace.

Sunday evening, I visited his bachelor pad on the beach. It had a Jacuzzi which was odd because Dad hates water, hates to swim. He fed me lasagna and poured the red wine. We caught up, we made peace, he told me how much college costs him, how many dollars each of us cost him . . . the numeration was startlingly mad.

Tuition: 2500 a semester

The sorority: 1500 a semester

Living expenses: 500/month

(Wow, how those numbers seem so paltry today!)

That’s just college—he recited how much he paid for me to live:

Hospital

Housing

Food

Schooling

Clothing

Art lessons

It all comes to US$250,000 and then he said times this by three. I suspect he’s done the same with the both of you.

He also told me he wasn’t dating.

I was getting ready to leave. He asked if I could drive. I think so—and just then the door opened, and L and A enter, Mickey Mouse hats on their heads, Disneyland bags in hands. We had a wonderful time L shouted from the door.

Caught. In. A. Lie.

Did you both know that? I am telling you now.

****

We own so many lies, and yet those lines of deception kept us together. Through Mom’s rages, through Dad’s solipsism, through our own disagreements, through the divorce which involved so many secrets and lies that there is no room for them here. But we remember and we know when to tell a lie, which is rare these days, and when not to. As we grew up, we each stumbled on the problematic terrain of secrets and lies—we fumbled with our friends and partners, got caught on occasion making stuff up, finally after a several failed relationships we learned to face the truth, which contrary to our upbringing was easier to do than to lie.

Keeping secrets and telling lies gets a bad rap; I am not suggesting that deceiving others for personal gain is ethical or moral—to the contrary! But much attention is given to the ill-effects of lying when there are situations and contexts when keeping secrets and telling lies enhance group support and cohesion as this practice did for us as children and that bonding keeps us close to this very day. For this, I am grateful for the deceptions we shared and grew out of. We learned how to keep secrets, which in our adult lives is sometimes needed to protect our loved ones and sometimes ourselves; and we learned that lying deliberately for self-interest can be a destructive interpersonal and social force, so we have learned to distinguish the two, and how to ethically deploy the former and morally avoid the latter. Still, can we explore how researchers have framed their inquiries around these questions?

For a long time, the assumption has been that healthy relations require overt honestly—that is that keeping secrets can be destructive to maintaining our friendships and families (Caughlin, 2009). Finding interpersonal connection and satisfaction can be difficult in our close relationships if we are not fully honest with one another (e.g., Caughlin et al., 2000; Vangelisti, 1994; Vangelisti & Caughlin, 1997). And keeping secrets, no matter the context, is a form of dishonesty. And yet, as in our homelife, what if we had tattled on Mom for buying the couches behind Dad’s back? We did not fully understand the dynamic between them, but we knew there was a power imbalance and had we breached that compact all mayhem could have broken loose. And as we know, Dad stayed in the marriage knowing he would have lost custody of us and would not have been able to protect us when needed. Did he protect us? We will never know what went on behind the scenes, but it is a good chance he helped keep the peace without our knowing. Yes, the marriage was doomed. Mom certainly seemed to want out but didn’t have the resources to leave. When she did, her life was nearly ruined, but the three of us rallied for her and she lives happy and well with lots of our love. So, we did good by keeping our secrets.

But so many of our secrets led to a deeper infraction: lying is considered an even more pernicious form of deception that negatively impacts our relationships (Caughlin et al., 2009, p. 727). In our situation, Mom kept secrets from Dad to avoid confrontation and denial of her wants and needs. These secrets led to collective lying as a means to protect her and our family from disunity and disruption. Such family bonding through shared deception has been found in research done by Vangelisti and Caughlin (1997): “the extent to which people reported that their whole family kept a secret to foster a bond among family members was positively related to family satisfaction” (p. 719). As children, we came to execute “blue lies, ¹ ” lies that are meant to benefit a group, such as a family unit. Although we are taught from an early age that lying is immoral, research indicates that even children as young as 7 understand that in some contexts lying is warranted to protect a collective unit such as a team or one’s family. Lying at a young age is associated with protecting the self, but as children mature and learn social norms and needs, a moral latitude develops. Western social and cultural foundations ² find their individualized “collective” or grouping through the family unit. The family unit is a valuable social glue. As we grow up, we come to understand our own role in supporting this unit and so for us, and I imagine many others, we told blue lies to protect our family. We can laugh about some of these events now (and we do) but at the time we knew something was not right—our mother’s violent rages, though rare, have informed our understanding of ourselves, motherhood, and patriarchal power. Together we did all we could to keep the peace, which keeping her secrets from Dad helped us do. Notably, Dad kept secrets too and yet we forgave him and helped him create his new family when he remarried. I doubt such loving acceptance would have been possible if we each had not been exposed to his own vulnerabilities and foibles. Somehow, we all learned to accept each other, support each other, and to live our own lives in contexts that do not require deceptions. And, yet those deceptions taught us the lessons of love, of understanding, and forgiveness.

Love your sister,

G