A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone

kind of husky blue—not as accents—but as unique colors for the downstairs rooms; accents would remain white, but be repainted in the spirit of newness. It had taken the better part of the week to dismantle the wood paneling, and clean and patch the walls.
    All the downstairs windows thrown open, overhead fans whirring, and the rooms lightened by the removal of the paneling, Liv could almost convince herself she were in an outbuilding, in the garage perhaps, or her father’s workshop. She applied a first coat, and thought of her father at his table, gluing together crafted pieces of wood to create trains and planes and racecars for the grandkids.
    She should ask for a train for Simon. Why hadn’t she thought of that while she was there? Anyway, now she had a reason to call her father, something to ask about besides cancer. Claire had helped to tape the room, and then taken Simon to get some clothes. He’d had a spurt that made him clumsy and ravenous and impossibly long-limbed.
    Liv’s body just felt sore now, no longer immobile and alien. She’d kept taking her pills, though, just in case. Paint dropped on her forearm
and she gazed at it, unwilling to wipe it away. A fly lifted against the window screen, settled, twitching. Resonance everywhere. That was the gift falling from the ladder had been.
    Sex used to be like this. Give this kind of clarity; make her feel like more than herself. With each brushstroke, she felt her skin move and her muscles stretch and her breath come and go. When Claire lay warm against her, Liv knew she could chart the flow of blood through arteries. That was how aware she was. She could see thoughts. Could feel the air move around matter. Liv: alive and aware and keen.
    She finished the first coat, and hurried to the camper to change before they returned. Simon’s first expedition to swim at Fish Lake; Liv had pitched the adventure to Claire that morning, and described the old Steam Shovel at the turnoff, and the wooden dock, and the idyllic, calm water. In the camper, Liv took four pills, had her trunks on when she heard their car pull up.
    Claire drove them to the lake; the windows opened, the oppressive July day sitting heavily in the car, their bodies sticky. Indeed, Simon found the Steam Shovel as mesmerizing as Liv had predicted. He wanted to drive it. They climbed from the car and let him marvel at its hot, rusted metal. Farther in, they parked the car and walked through the pine trees down the trail toward the lake. Needles crunched beneath their sandals. Simon stopped to collect rocks, and again, when he saw the snake; alerted to its presence by a spider scurrying across the snake’s flesh, or because he’d thought it was a stick and then realized suddenly that it wasn’t. Liv had taken a step beyond the child, and put her hand on his back to press him forward when she nearly stepped on the snake, and it shot forward into the litter.
    She screamed, “Snake!” Grabbed Simon. Screamed, “Snake!” again and ran with him through the trees. Though he’d been calm a moment before, staring at the surprising creature, now he thrashed and shrieked for his mother.
    â€œLiv,” Claire said, trying to reach them. Their towels left on the trail like wrapping paper, she chased behind. “Liv, stop it. Stop. Liv!”
And just as suddenly as the snake had bolted, Liv stopped, set Simon down, and stared about her. The day a smudge in her head, blurred and baffling, she stood on the pine needles by someone’s minivan in the tiny parking lot. “I’m so sorry,” she said to the inconsolable child, and his mother. “Wow. I’m a little thrown. Did you see it? The snake? Did you see?”

Thirteen
    Doses
    Claire was scary when she was mad. Her voice, restrained and icy, seemed to insinuate itself into Liv’s brain so that her lecture came from without and within simultaneously. In the camper, standing by the