The Last of the Stanfields

by Marc Levy

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying.” Robert Evans

The freight elevator had long since died, its rusty gate swallowed up in the dingy landscape of dust and brick.

This is the natural order of things: all we can ever see of our parents is what they wish to show us, how we in turn choose to see them. It’s easy to forget that they had a whole life before us.

“There are times when I talk to you and I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of a Monty Python sketch.”

“There are only two types of men in this world,” Sally-Anne replied with a chiding smile. “Men with problems and men with solutions.” Sally-Anne had learned out of sheer necessity—and often when dealing with men—that she sometimes had to put her ethics on hold. The deed was done: Keith had walked straight into Sally-Anne’s trap. Watching the man leap back into his work with an extra dose of fervor and energy almost made May feel sorry for him. But it was for a good cause, after all.

You’re a bear deep in the woods, it said. Women really are something else. How is it they’re able to sometimes say more with one sentence than a man can get out in an entire monologue?

“I’m leaving . . . on a search to find Mum,” I told him. “That’s wonderful, although I’m afraid your search could be fruitless, as I’m rather convinced she’s not in Baltimore. In fact, no one really knows where dead people go. Certainly not into the sky; it could never support the weight. For my part, I favor the theory of an alternate dimension. Are you familiar with the alternate dimension theory?”

I therefore deduced that perhaps she suffered from nostalgia, and in all the books I’ve read, such contradictions seem to always involve a love story.”

Every time I objected to his methods, he’d use his favorite catchphrase: “I’m a dealer of dreams, and dreams are ageless.”

Point is: you can never really get rid of a lie you’ve convinced yourself is true. Food for thought.

I have loved you every day since and will keep on loving you until my dying day. Who knows? Had we stayed together, maybe that love would have eventually turned to hate, as it happens with so many couples left to weather the storm of time

“It’s not so easy, accepting that you’ve been lied to all your life.” “But you’ve moved on and learned to forgive, haven’t you?” “No. I have simply learned to accept. It’s not the same thing.”

It had been a very long time since I had gone walking down the street holding hands with a man. The fact in and of itself didn’t mean much. But when that kind of thought crosses your mind, you suddenly become convinced that there is something wrong with your life, and perhaps, even something wrong with you.

“Good old Canada geese. When I was a kid, my mother told me that when the geese leave, snow falls from their feathers . . . then they splash into the waters of the southern hemisphere and turn it blue, swallowing liters of it and coming back our way to paint everything in spring colors. It wasn’t total make-believe; every year when they take off, you know winter is on its way, and then they come back and bring the nice weather with them.”

When an old person dies, it’s as though a library has burnt to the ground. I longed to discover the volumes May still carried around with her, even if she herself had long since forgotten them.