Lying and Stealing

Lying

It is wrong to lie. She has been taught that from an early age, and everybody knows how rigidly she follows rules and regulations. Yet more and more she feels like everything about her life is a lie. The ideal house, swept and dusted within an inch of perfection. The carefully posed family portraits, beaming at her from the walls. The reflection in the mirror, a picture of colour co-ordination, offset with a stylised flick of the hair. Her methodically placed happy smile.

Each lie is carefully layered upon another, the joins (cracks?) are barely perceptible – but the deception is still there. Increasingly she feels that if you peeled the lies away, delicately exposing each successive raw layer, there would be nothing left at the centre of her life.

Then there is Lynette.

The furtive glances, whisper light touches and soft, stolen kisses that Lynette brings into her life are most definitely lies. Lies against her carefully constructed image and, ‘perfect,’ life, not to mention lies against her rapidly crumbling marriage. However, just one moment together makes the lies worthwhile, the pastel shades and white picket fences of Wysteria Lane fading in comparison to the colourful explosion of reality that surrounds them. At the height of deception, the passionate centre of dishonesty where heated lips graze fevered skin, their relationship feels like the most truthful thing in her world.

***

More and more she feels the strain of maintaining silence in the face of Lynette’s trusting words of affection. Increasingly her refusal to say the words, ‘I love you,’ is her biggest lie of all.

Stealing

It is wrong to steal. She has been trying to teach the boys that from an early age. Not that they listen…not that they ever do. Why should they when they have a thief for a mother? She had thought nothing of stealing during the heady heights of her career. Stealing a tip, stealing a lead from her competitors, stealing away with the glory and basking in the after glow of another successful business deal.

Now she is stealing again. Except this time it is with Bree.

She is stealing a mother and a wife, removing a woman from her seemingly perfect existence, not to mention stealing trust and time from her already harried marriage. But there is nothing vindictive about this kind of stealing, only loving embraces, the passion of one body pressing into another as urgent affection is exchanged between lovers.

The ruthless efficiency of a business deal is gone. They steal time in a haphazard and fitful fashion. However, each stolen minute brings with it an eternity of calm. When she arches into Bree’s arms the fragments of stolen time seem worthwhile, their relationship promising a shelter of lingering love, a barricade against her otherwise frayed life.

***

More and more she feels a chill as she softly traces words of endearment across Bree’s lips and is met with silence. Every time Bree refuses to say the words, ‘I love you,’ another part of her heart steals away.