I forgot all about this funny, little story… I wrote it years ago and when I found it in my fiction cold storage locker in the cloud, I decided to share it. Yes, I’ve done some ghostwriting, but NOTHING like this protagonist!
I don’t know how it happened. The words just fell out of my mouth. There I was nodding and smiling, listening to these basically fine, but definitely boring people describing their lives; and when they turned to me I just didn’t have the heart to tell the truth. I could not be one of them—not anymore. No. It was time to be someone else.
And once the lies began to tumble, they did not stop. By the end of the trip I’d woven a complex tapestry of lies, half truths, and fantasy.
No, I did not make up a name. That would have been irrational and the pretense would have been impossible to maintain. The ship’s manifest lists me as Isabella Murray so I didn’t lie about that. I just said call me Belle—as I always did—and it was followed by jokes about ‘Beauty and the Beast’—as it always does. And then something clicked into place in my brain and the tsunami of dissembling began.
Instead of being Isabella Murray, 50-plus-year-old recently retired advertising copywriter, now freelancing for a website developer as the “content provider” for a series of business blogs, with a file cabinet full of unpublished manuscripts dating back to my 20s, vacationing in the luxurious double cabin my late mother booked before her stroke—I became Belle Murray, ghost writer of scandalous celebrity memoirs and fiction for hire under other names.
“You don’t really think all those authors actually write their own books, do you?” I asked with a knowing glance. “I’m one of the many hacks hired to do the actual work. No glory, but I get a nice paycheck. No fuss, no muss. The hams can do the book tours, I’ll take money and run.”
They wanted names. I refused, but my hints were suggestive and if they imagined that a popular author of multiple mystery series actually hired a staff of writers to churn out new titles twice or three times a year under her name, all the better. My ‘Ghost Writer Code’ was strict.
“I never reveal for whom I’ve written—whether it’s fiction or a memoir. The books always come out under the client’s name.”
“What about movie rights?” A retired lawyer with a sly smile asked.
“There’s a contingency in my contract,” I replied without a pause.
“So you get a percentage?”
I nodded.
“That’s excellent! Good business…”
“But since I don’t write the screenplay, it’s a tiny bit of the gross profits. Besides, those made-for-TV movies based on a the real life experiences of so-in-so are usually awful, aren’t the?”
He chuckled. Adding, “My wife is addicted to them. The girl who was kidnapped and held in a shed for 10 years by a madman; the haunted boarding school; the serial killer next door… She eats them up.”
I responded with nothing but a knowing smile and he all but demanded to know if I had anything to do with the current bestselling memoir about surviving incest in a religious organization that I will not discuss here for fear of liable.
I became a popular personality on the cruise. From that first night on, I was invited to join private cocktail parties and included in tables at dinner. As a woman traveling alone, I’d expected to be ignored if not completely shunned or pitied. But my new persona, my created character with a fascinating life and a mysterious profession, made me an attractive addition to social gatherings.
“Belle, won’t you join us for sunset drinks? Belle, are you taking the excursion tomorrow morning? We’d love you to be in our launch. Belle, a few of us are meeting up for after dinner drinks. Please come along.”
It soon became apparent that I didn’t have to add to the original stories. I simply allowed the imaginations of my audience to fill in the many blanks with sordid, exciting, and dangerous details. They grew to like me—not exactly me, but this other Belle with an interesting professional life. I overheard two of the women talking about me.
“It’s so odd that she’s single.”
“So attractive, so interesting…. She must have had a long-term affair with a married man, someone important and public. That’s the only reason for her to be alone. The only one I can think of…”
“Or maybe she has a tragic past? A dead lover, a lost child…. You know, something too awful to talk about so she buries herself in the drama of other people’s lives.”
“Well, whatever it is, she’s a great addition to this trip. Remember that crazy old lady and her daughter that we met in Greece? So boring. All they talked about was art and history and books and politics—nothing worse than super intellectual women. And she’s quite attractive, too. Nice figure. She must work out a great deal at home. I saw her on the treadmill in the gym. So glad we have Belle and not one of those boring old ladies traveling with their single daughters.”
Mom would have been appalled.
This was to be a mother/daughter holiday. She was getting up there and knew she didn’t have too many trips left in her. She often told me that she was glad I’d never married, never left her entirely alone after Dad died, that she didn’t regret not having grandchildren.
“Most of my friends have grandchildren, but none of them has a good daughter like you—a daughter who is also a friend.”
She booked the cruise for us and the stroke hit her two months before the departure date. She told me, when she was still managing to speak a bit, that she was going to get better so I shouldn’t cancel the cruise. The doctors told me that her recovery would be, at best, temporary and incomplete, but she held on to the dream of that last trip and I did not have the heart to cancel it.
Yes, I could have lied to her. I could have told her that I was certain she’d be fine and we’ll be on at least one more trip together. But you must understand, I didn’t lie then. I didn’t dissemble or exaggerate—unless I was writing advertising copy—and my mother trusted me to tell her the truth.
“Mom, I won’t cancel it and, if you recover well enough we’ll go together, and if you don’t I’ll go alone. They don’t think you’ll be up for it. You know that. But I hope you will. Another trip would be great.”
“I know what they say, Belle. Still I want to travel again. One more time, Belle, just once more…”
She broke my heart when she said that. I knew she was dying and I also knew that she knew she was dying, but she still wanted me—me who always told the truth—to lie to her and assure her that she would recover and we would travel again.
I miss her.
I don’t miss the person she was for the last few weeks of her life. I miss the way she was before. She was a large personality with many friends and social connections. But for the last few years of her life, her circle grew smaller and her life grew smaller and she was left with me. I don’t regret being a good daughter. I just think that, maybe, it’s my time and I can break the rules I once lived by.
I told another lie last night. It was a whopper. I honestly don’t know where it came from. I was a bit tipsy—bordering on actually drunk—and I was sitting in the lounge enjoying the rapt attention of one of the cruise line’s executives. He just happened to be a very handsome and age appropriate, single man. I can’t remember feeling that giddy in years. I’d given up on flirting, on men, on myself, on all sorts of things in the waning years of my mother’s life.
All of that, all of my dreams, and ambitions, seemed petty given her needs—they didn’t just seem petty, they were. In the context of life & death, the joy of a moment in the sun & the end forever, me finding a publisher for my novels or entering a short story contest or finding an agent, or even pumping out a second draft, is petty. Flirting with a handsome stranger was off my radar entirely. But…
The new Belle, the new improved, liar Belle turned out to be a shameless flirt and I wove a secretive backstory for myself right out of a romance novel. I let him believe I was the illegitimate daughter of a famous author. I didn’t mention the name, but I knew he was intelligent enough to fill in one of several serious names in the blank space I left. We talked seriously about life & death, about aspirations & daydreams, about moving forward while looking back and then he kissed me.
It was lovely, but it was also a lie so I broke away from his embrace and went back to my cabin to write. The next morning was the end of the cruise. I wanted to slip away before the “Belle Fan Club” got ahold of me. When we pulled into the final Port of Call I was the first one off the ship. As I was flying home that afternoon, I headed for the airport in a taxi and plopped myself down at a café for a late breakfast. It was not until my second cup of coffee that I noticed a familiar face from the cruise. She was tall, about my age or a bit younger, with a serious look tempered by a toothpaste model smile.
“If your actual fiction is half as good as your game on this cruise, I want to meet with you in New York and read your manuscripts.”
She handed me her card. She was a senior editor at a major publishing house.
“Call me on Monday. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
Before I could say a word, she waved goodbye and headed into the crowd of travelers.
