The Secret Women

by Sheila Williams

  Dee Dee looked down at a page in her notebook covered with writing highlighted in yellow.

  “And there was the brother . . .”

  Carmen nodded.

  “Yes, David. He was the one I looked for first, because, well, he would have been younger and Cousin Dorothy’s letters indicated that he kept in touch with Mom and with . . . Richard after they got married.” She wasn’t ready to call him her father, not yet. Carmen sighed. “He got married. No children, though. Died in 1984. Dorothy’s gone now. I don’t have anything. Just assumptions based on what I know, and the records from Vital Statistics.” She permitted herself to sigh. “If they ever get here.”

  This time it was Dee Dee who shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I could get one of the services we use at work to do an enhanced web search.”

  Elise looked at Carmen. “I know that you don’t want to hear this. But I think all of your roads are leading to Rome,” she said.

  “Rome?” Carmen echoed.

  “Rome. Your father.”

  “Oh no.” Carmen shook her head. “I can’t. Not yet. I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Carmen, think about it. He married a woman who already had a child. He has to know something. It might not be everything that you want to know, but—”

  “But it might be . . . enough. You’re right,” Carmen said, feeling defeated. She sank back against the cushions, remembering the expression on her father’s face when she’d picked up the old worn boxes from the basement. He had been afraid. Then, she hadn’t known what was bothering him. Now, well, she was pretty sure she did.

  “Are you going to go see him?” Elise asked.

  Carmen tapped an icon on her phone and chuckled. “Yes. End of next week, as a matter of fact, Thursday. I’m having dinner with him and The Mrs. Reverend Doctor Oakes.”

  “Again. So soon? You’ve barely recovered from the last dinner,” Elise quipped.

  A disturbing thought popped into Carmen’s head. “I hope they aren’t planning to make some kind of announcement.” She groaned.

  Dee Dee giggled. “Is that ‘The’ with a capital T?”

  “And do you have to curtsey when you greet her?” Elise piped in.

  Before Carmen could answer, the server swooped in with their food. As the plates were arranged, Carmen’s mind wandered off. She thought about the recent dinner with her dad, with Elaine Oakes in attendance, about lemon-meringue-colored St. John jackets and long, shiny, fire-engine-red lacquered nails, and her mother’s luminous face with its dark, perfect brows and sparkling light brown eyes, a woman she really hadn’t known very well at all.

  Part 3

  Chapter 22

  Elise

  Elise sat at the kitchen island, her elbows on the counter. She looked around at the now empty kitchen cabinets and tried to persuade herself that this was a good sign. The kitchen was finally cleared out, clean, and, except for the Keurig on the counter, ready for the new owner. The sunny outlook did not last long. Elise dropped her head into her arms.

  “I’m doomed.”

  It was early Sunday afternoon, and Dee Dee and Carmen were spending a few hours with her as part of their mutual pact and in response to her call for help. Later in the coming week Carmen would have dinner with her father, when, she hoped, all would be revealed. And the weekend following, the women were meeting Dee Dee at her home to address the four mysterious boxes that had reigned supreme on the family Ping-Pong table for months. But for now, it was Elise’s turn in the spotlight. And she was nearly having a panic attack.

  “No, you don’t understand. I am totally doomed,” she murmured from beneath her folded arms.

  Dee Dee giggled.

  Carmen, emerging from the lavatory as she dried her hands on a towel, made a face of wry amusement. “You sound like Charlie Brown.”

  “It’s exactly how I feel!” Elise whined, exaggerating only a little. She opened her arms and lifted her head. “Look at this place! We packed up twelve sets of china, and it still looks like the first floor of Macy’s in here!”

  “Fourteen.” Carmen’s voice was barely audible as she walked into the dining room to finish putting a large packing box together.

  “And it does not look like that!” Dee Dee countered, grabbing a handful of grapes as she padded into the kitchen, having relinquished her shoes because of a throbbing bunion. “It looks . . . better than it did.”

  Elise did not think she sounded convincing.

  “You can’t give up before you’ve really started,” Dee Dee added.

  “Fourteen,” Carmen’s disembodied voice repeated as she moved into the kitchen from the dining room, where she was now hidden behind the gigantic box she’d assembled.

  “Besides, we’ve got buckets of time. Two months, right? Until the thirtieth of June? That’s . . . geez, plenty of time if you count weekends.”

  “We have twenty-two days. Remember, I met with the attorney last Friday,” Elise said in a tone that sounded as if she was announcing the end of the world by killer asteroid. “Cash offer, possession at closing.”

  Dee Dee’s mouth formed an O.

  “Okay . . . twenty-two days. No worries. We can do this.” Her expression said otherwise.

  Elise moaned. “See! That’s what I mean! The actual time is getting shorter—it’s been cut in half! I’m. Doomed!”

  “Okay. You’re getting hysterical. You need a drink,” Dee Dee concluded, pouring a clear golden pinot blanc into a wineglass and handing it to Elise. “Actually, I need one too.” She poured a second glass. “Carmen? Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “Fourteen,” Carmen barked out again. “Or maybe fifteen,” she added under her breath.

  This time both Elise and Dee Dee turned to look at her. She was in the living room surrounded by a Gotham City–like landscape of brown packing boxes. Only her eyes, her nose, and the top of her head were visible over the top of a huge box.

  “Fourteen what? Glasses of wine?” Elise asked.

  “Noooo. Not wine, china,” Carmen said. “It was fourteen sets of china, not twelve. You forgot about the second Christmas set we found in the basement next to the furnace filters and the Bavarian silver in the coat closet.” She paused and held up a finger as if counting. “Actually, maybe it’s fifteen . . .”

  Elise took a long sip of her wine and sighed dramatically.

  “Like I said: doomed.” She looked around at the packing boxes and newspaper, and the legal pad that held her innumerable to-do lists. A lit match would just about take care of all this mess. The idea was very tempting.

  The women were silent for a moment. Carmen sipped her wine. Elise scanned the small village of brown boxes in multiple sizes, some full and ready for sealing, others newspaper-lined caverns waiting to be filled with more dishes, glassware, linens, and whatever other treasures of the late Marie Wade’s life. Dee Dee sat down on a stool next to the kitchen island and rubbed her aching foot. Now it was Elise’s turn to giggle.

  “Ah yes, the high cost of glamour.”

  Dee Dee scowled as her fingers massaged the ball of her foot. “As the man said, it is better to look good than feel good.” She glanced at the lighthouses of North America calendar that Elise had tacked up on the wall, the photo picturing a breathtaking structure dominating a rocky and isolated isthmus in Nova Scotia. “Okay. Let’s not panic. There’s got to be a way to do this,” she said. “Your mom got all this stuff into this place. So there’s got to be a way to get it out.”

  Elise chuckled. “True. But remember. Mom got it in here over a span of thirty-some years! We have exactly twenty-two days, but that includes weekdays when we’re at work and three weekends.”

  “Okay,” Carmen said, using her best managerial-problem-solver voice. “Don’t panic. We have a good plan. We work the plan. We go room to room. Pull everything out, and you set aside the things you want to keep. Everything else goes to either Goodwill, consignment, your kids, or . . . eBay.” Carmen was intoxicated by eBay. “Right?” She reac
hed into the box she had just finished filling, pulled out a flower vase molded and decorated to look like an owl, and held it up in the air. “Okay. Elise. Pay attention.”

  Elise and Carmen grinned.

  “Do you want this?”

  Elise shook her head. “No.”

  “Do you think that your sons will want it?”

  Elise gave her a look that said, Get real.

  “Do you want any of these?” Carmen held up a few of the other vases in the box.

  “No.”

  “Perfect.” Carmen tucked everything back inside, marked the box, and folded the tabs down.

  She opened the next box and repeated the exercise. Again, Elise alternated between sips of wine and saying no.

  Once the dining room table was clear, Carmen pointed to the box that held the Bavarian silver dinner service.

  “Okay. Dinner service for twelve, Bavarian silver pattern. Yes or no.”

  Elise saluted her with her wineglass. “Nein.”

  “I don’t understand, E,” Dee Dee commented. “Don’t you want any of the china? Have you thought about this?”

  Elise scanned the room, something she’d done so often that the furniture and other items were a blur of colors and shapes. Now they came into focus and registered in her memory as if she were seeing them for the first time.

  Maybe that was part of the problem. She’d thought about it too much, just not in the right way.

  Do I want the china? Or the art or the furniture or the knickknacks or the books or the jewelry or the baskets or the twenty-five aloe, philodendron, African violet, and jade plants? If I don’t take any of this stuff, I’m basically throwing away my mother. These are her treasures, things precious to her, and she was precious to me . . . I don’t have her around now, and if I throw away her treasures . . . I won’t have anything.

  “Elise? Are you all right? You’re not stroking out on us, are you?”

  Elise hadn’t realized that she had zoned out until Dee Dee’s face materialized in front of her nose. She swallowed hard, then began sobbing.

  “If I throw her away, I won’t have anything!”

  Dee Dee grabbed a handful of tissues from her handbag and stuffed them into Elise’s hand while Carmen topped off her wineglass and patted her gently on the back. The sobs morphed into whimpers, then into hiccups and snorts. Elise blew her nose.

  “I-I’m sorry. I guess I was . . . I am . . . overwhelmed.”

  “No worries,” Dee Dee said.

  “It’s understandable,” Carmen chimed in. “You’ve done a lot here. But there’s quite a bit left to do and not much time to do it in. The good thing is, the condo’s sold. So that burden is off your shoulders.”

  “Yes,” murmured Elise, looking around the room that had been her mother’s favorite place to read, entertain friends, and enjoy her fireplace. Memories. All crushed to bits because . . .

  The irrationality of her thoughts flooded back again. Her mother’s possessions were flush with memories, good ones. And if she gave them away, then those lovely memories, the ones associated with Marie’s belongings, would disappear too, or most of them would. The stage would be bare, stripped down. As long as the “stuff” was around, Elise had a shield, a kind of buffer against the loud, painful silence left by one thing: the memory of her last conversation with her mother.

  Elise dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose loudly. She gulped down the wine, then jumped up from the couch and began clicking off the lights. “That’s it, I’m done.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s early. You girls go on home and enjoy the rest of your day. We’re finished here.”

  “Elise, we don’t mind staying. I’ve already blocked off the time,” Dee Dee reassured her, exchanging a quick What the hell is going on? glance with Carmen, who shrugged her shoulders and said, “I can stay too. Let’s finish this room and—”

  “No.”

  The volume and sharpness of Elise’s voice startled them.

  “I’m not doing this.” She walked into the kitchen and began gathering up the glasses and stacking them in the dishwasher.

  “Okay, well, I understand that you’re upset. We can finish this another time—” Elise’s voice cut her off.

  “No. You don’t get it. I’m not finishing this another time. When I say I’m done, I mean I’m done.”

  “W-well, who’s going to clear out all of this stuff?” Dee Dee asked.

  “No one. I’ll get the junk company to come in, pack it up, and take it to a storage locker.”

  “Storage locker.” The tone in Carmen’s voice was flat.

  Dee Dee’s mouth dropped open, but she didn’t say anything.

  Carmen stared at Elise for a moment, then continued, “You don’t mean to tell us that you’re keeping all of this stuff.”

  Elise nodded. “I do mean that. I’m keeping it. For now.”

  “Forever,” Carmen snapped.

  “E, that’s ridiculous.” Dee Dee frowned.

  “That’s my business.”

  “What’s really going on here?” Carmen asked in a tone as sharp as Elise’s. “I hate to seem dense, but there’s something you aren’t saying. This whole exercise was your idea. You’ve walked me through my mother’s life, and now I’ve got a new path to explore, including the conversation with my father, which I’m dreading.” She gestured toward Dee Dee. “We have a plan for Dee Dee and we had a plan for you. Why don’t you want us to finish? This was all your idea!”

  Elise shook her head. “There’s nothing up with it. I . . . changed my mind, that’s all.”

  “Bullshit,” Dee Dee said.

  “You’re lying,” Carmen added with equal venom.

  Elise’s light brown eyes seemed to glow for a moment, then she turned away, her purse in her hand. “Get your things so I can lock up.”

  Dee Dee took a step toward her, but Carmen grabbed her arm. They both gathered up their things and followed Elise out the front door. Elise closed and locked it, and they walked toward the street, where Elise called over her shoulder, “I’ll call you.” She knew Carmen and Dee Dee had stopped on the sidewalk and were watching her as she moved toward where her car was parked. Once she turned the corner out of their sight, she clicked the key fob and sprinted to her car. She threw her tote onto the seat. Then she put her head against the steering wheel and cried.

  Elise jumped when the sound of tapping on her window broke through the flood of tears and sobs. She sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her arm, and turned the key in the ignition to push the window button. Dee Dee poked her head through the open window and held out a tissue. Carmen stood behind her on the sidewalk.

  “Do you want to tell us what this is all about?”

  Elise sniffed and leaned against the headrest, her eyes closed. “I . . . don’t really know what it’s about,” she said, her voice cracking. “I just know that I . . . can’t let go of Mom’s things.”

  “Why?” Dee Dee asked in a soft voice.

  “Because they’re all I have of her.”

  “E, you have your memories.” This from Carmen.

  “No,” Elise answered. “Just one memory.”

  Chapter 23

  Elise

  Even before Owen Wade died, Elise and her mother were close. Elise was the only daughter wedged in between “two grubby boys,” as Marie referred to her sons. The birth of a girl gave her a good deal of joy and an excuse to indulge herself shopping for frilly dresses, in pastel colors, lace-trimmed anklet socks, and patent leather shoes. The baby’s nursery was a wonderland of pink gingham and ruffles. If Elise had wanted to be anything but a “girlie girl,” she would have been out of luck. Marie decided the moment after she was born that her life would be cushioned and colored in pink. She began life as her mother’s “precious darling” and moved into adulthood as her mother’s buddy.

  Their father’s death at age eighty-two was devastating but expected. Once the ordeal of the funeral was over and Elise’s brother Warren returned to his home
in Seattle, it was up to Elise and her remaining brother, Bill, to keep “an eye” on their mother. A habit takes about twenty-one days to form. By the time twenty-two days had passed, Elise and her mother were as thick as thieves, best friends, inseparable. If you saw one, you saw the other. And because Elise resembled Marie so much, mutual friends began calling them the Black Olsen Twins, the only set of twins in the world who were identical except for a twenty-five-year age difference. They went everywhere together: the grocery store, the movies, club meetings, even yoga class, although Marie preferred Pilates. They sat together in church, they did their part for Walk for the Cure, and they protested the protestors who were picketing the Planned Parenthood center. They sent each other emails and text messages (Marie loved texting); they spoke on the phone every day. If Marie felt smothered by the attention, she didn’t mention it. And if Elise was overwhelmed by the energy it took as she tried to fill the void of companionship left by the death of her father, she never let on. Her parents had been close, married over fifty years and soul mates, if such a relationship existed. Elise felt that she was doing her duty as a daughter to help her mother over the “hump” as she coped with being a single woman over seventy-five, maneuvering the world alone. It wasn’t a mission Elise spent much time thinking about; she just did it. She wove her mother’s life into her own, filling her planner with Marie’s appointments in an eye-catching turquoise ink next to her own meetings and obligations. She set timers to call her mother at certain moments every day, included Marie in her social activities. Elise’s day was tightly organized around Marie’s, and vice versa.

  “Sweetie, I don’t want to be a third wheel,” Marie protested when Elise asked her to attend a charity gala with her and Bobby.

  “Mom, don’t worry about that. You know that Bobby adores you,” Elise said.

  “Are you comin’ home tonight?” Elise’s husband would say when Elise told him she was stopping at Marie’s after work or dropping her off after they’d been to Zumba class.

  “Maybe not,” Elise would say occasionally, staying over at her mother’s so much that she stashed a small tote of cosmetics and a nightgown there.