The Long Secret

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “Son, I just don’t understand you, bringing me to a place like this. My arthritis is killing me, and this place is one of the dampest places in America.”

  Bunny fled indoors, his great shirt and Moo-Moo flapping behind him. The chef and his wife went through the door too as though they were all being herded in by the old lady’s words. She grumbled her way in after them and slammed the screen door.

  Harriet and Beth Ellen waited a minute but nothing more happened. Beth Ellen sighed. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Harriet.

  They crawled out from under the hedge. Their shirts were brown with mud. Harriet took out her notebook, which never left her side and in which she wrote down everything that happened to her. Beth Ellen put a finger in her mouth as though a tooth hurt.

  Harriet wrote down everything, putting many exclamation points after some comments on Beth Ellen’s attitude toward Bunny, then added this coda:

  NOW THE THING IS WHO WOULD LEAVE NOTES LIKE THIS? SOMEBODY WHO READS THE BIBLE BECAUSE THEY ALL SOUND LIKE THEY’RE RIGHT OUT OF THE BIBLE. WHO DOES READ THE BIBLE? DOES ANYBODY? DOES MY MOTHER? FIND OUT. CHECK ON THIS.

  he put her book away and woke up Beth Ellen, who was standing in a trance. “You want to go to the beach?”

  “Yes,” said Beth Ellen and smiled a really happy smile. They jumped on their bikes, and turning them around, headed for the beach.

  Once there they put their bikes on top of the hill where they could watch them from the beach. Harriet took her yellow beach towel, her lunch, and her notebooks out of the basket and started thumping down the hill. Beth Ellen had a drawing pad with her as well as her lunch and a bright orange and white beach towel.

  The sand was hot. There was no wind. The sand burned their ankles and got into their sneakers. They trudged on toward the water, where it was cooler.

  Harriet looked around for a good place. She found one not too far from two young mothers sitting guard on two toddlers and engaged in a spirited conversation. She hoped she would be able to overhear them without being too obvious.

  They spread out their towels. Beth Ellen took off her shorts, sneakers, and shirt, and sat down in her bathing suit. She looked at the ocean and found it, after Bunny, dull.

  Harriet took off her shirt, her shorts with the hooks and tools for spying, and her sneakers, and ran like blazes toward the water. Her red and white striped suit made a pink streak, she went so fast. Beth Ellen stared, then jumped and followed. Harriet was leaping like a wild thing out to sea. When it covered her stomach, she dove under a wave. Beth Ellen watched her with envy. She could never, like Harriet, just run straight into the water. She always had to coax herself, sidle a little along the coast, then hold her nose and run at the moment she least expected it. Years of swimming instruction at various resorts had come to nothing because of her conviction that the minute she went in she would sink.

  She rushed in, her heart thumping horribly. It wasn’t too cold. She got wet all over, then looked around for Harriet. Harriet seemed to be going to Europe. “Hey!” she yelled after the bobbing head.

  Harriet stopped abruptly and stood up. The water was shallow. Beth Ellen felt rather an idiot to be so afraid in such shallow water.

  “Hey, Mouse! Come on out here!” Harriet yelled. Beth Ellen plowed along through the knee-high water. Even so, when a wave hit her, she thought she was done for.

  They played and swam for a long time, the hot sun burning their backs and faces, the cool water all around them a long blue going into nowhere.

  “Let’s eat,” said Harriet, and they started back. Harriet found a small wave to ride a bit of the way in, but Beth Ellen kept up an unsteady walk, always looking back to see if a wave was going to drown her.

  When they got back to the towels, all wet and hot again and tasting of salt, they plunked down and both grabbed for their lunch bags. Beth Ellen picked a sandwich out and started to eat it.

  “What is that?” asked Harriet.

  “Pimento cheese.”

  Harriet got out several sandwiches, all tomato. Beth Ellen knew they would all be tomato, so she didn’t even ask. They were always tomato. For as long as Beth Ellen could remember, Harriet had brought tomato sandwiches to school in the winter and to the beach in the summer.

  Through one of these Harriet asked, “Did you understand all that French?”

  “Was it French?” answered Beth Ellen, looking out to sea and chewing. She was suddenly irritated with Harriet and her tomato sandwiches.

  Harriet’s eyes widened. “You know, sometimes, Beth Ellen, I wonder where you keep yourself.”

  Beth Ellen looked at her once but didn’t show any emotion, nor did she seem to be thinking of anything. They continued to eat in silence.

  Harriet strained her ears to hear what the two young mothers were saying to each other, but she could only hear the ocean. Maybe, she thought, if I put a shell to my ear I could hear their conversation. She laughed to herself but decided not to tell Beth Ellen because it sounded bats. Sometimes it was hard to talk to Beth Ellen because she would stare at you with such round, blank eyes that you would begin to wonder what you’d said.

  Harriet got out her notebook and looked over her notes. “Who do you think could be doing this?” she asked Beth Ellen.

  “What?” asked Beth Ellen.

  “Leaving the notes!” screamed Harriet. Really, sometimes the girl seemed daft.

  “Oh,” said Beth Ellen, turning enormous eyes on Harriet, “I can’t imagine.”

  “Hhrumph!” said Harriet with disapproval.

  Beth Ellen continued to stare until Harriet looked back at her notebook. Then she picked up her drawing pad and a pencil. She started to draw a fat lady being eaten by a turtle, but she got bored with it and began to draw the two mothers and their children.

  Harriet put down her notebook which contained her spy notes and picked up the one in which she was writing a story called “The Evil Hotel.” She read over what she had written last and found it splendid.

  She turned over a few pages because she didn’t want to continue the story today. She had been trying for two days to write a poem.

  She had recently discovered poetry and something about the economy of it appealed to her. She sat still, very still, looking at the water but thinking of a day last fall. On that day she had stood in the park across the street from her school in New York. She had watched the Good Humor man blow his nose in a bright blue handkerchief.

  It had been about to rain and she felt lost. Feelings that just appeared and were not attached to anything had always fascinated her. She wrote:

  IT WAS GOING TO RAIN

  She looked at it, then crossed it out and wrote:

  BEFORE THE RAIN

  She then wrote:

  THE PARK

  And changed it to:

  THE WORLD

  Now she had:

  BEFORE THE RAIN

  THE WORLD

  She sat thinking about how the park had looked that day, so green, so expectant, still, and tense. She thought of words like “waiting,” “hushed,” “tired,” but it was not any of these. She thought of “young.” She began to put things together like “waiting green,” “hurting grass,” “a frightened tree.” Then, suddenly, she wrote down:

  BEFORE THE RAIN

  THE WORLD

  IS GREEN

  But the rest had to be there. She suddenly wanted it to rhyme. What rhymed with rain? Rain, cane, mane. She decided to go through the alphabet:

  Ain (nothing).

  Bain (nothing … oh, yes, Bane).

  Cane.

  Dane (a great Dane in the park?).

  Hane (nothing).

  Oh, dear, she thought, I forgot the alphabet.

  Dane.

  Eain (nothing).

  Fain (feign?).

  Gain (with nothing to gain?).

  No. Thinking of the phrase again, she cringed a little and thought, Boring. This is a little like playing Scrabble, she thought happily and plunged i
n again.

  Hane (nothing).

  I (nothing).

  Jane (Janie?).

  Kane (nothing).

  Lane (and in the park, a lane? Maybe. No. Stinks).

  Mane.

  Nane (nothing).

  O (nothing).

  Pain (oh, there!).

  It felt like a pain, that look the world had. She wrote it down:

  AND FILLED WITH PAIN

  No. Not that. She changed it to:

  AND FULL OF PAIN

  Not that. That’s worse. She crossed it out and wrote:

  AND IN PAIN

  She thought fleetingly of throwing out the whole thing. But, no, it was fun. She threw out the line instead.

  Q (nothing).

  Rain (already there).

  Sain (sane? insane? Maybe. No).

  Tane (nothing).

  U (nothing).

  Vain (is vain? AH! Well, perhaps).

  X (nothing).

  Y (nothing).

  Z (nothing).

  Hhrumph, she thought, and sat chewing the two thoughts, vain and pain. She looked around the beach. Nothing much had changed. Beth Ellen was lying on her stomach, drawing with her nose quite close to the paper.

  “What are you drawing?” asked Harriet, twisting around to look at her.

  “A house on fire,” said Beth Ellen calmly.

  “You like to draw, don’t you?” asked Harriet.

  “Yes.”

  “Then are you going to be an artist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Be an artist,” said Harriet, dismissing Beth Ellen as a solved problem.

  Beth Ellen sat up and looked at the back of Harriet’s neck for a long time. “I don’t,” she said quietly, “want to be anything at all.”

  Harriet didn’t turn around but said, “That’s ridiculous. How can you do that?”

  “I want to grow up and marry a rich man. I want to have a little boy and, maybe, a little girl. I want to go to Biarritz.”

  Harriet stared at her. “That’s the most boring thing I ever heard of.” She looked straight into Beth Ellen’s eyes.

  Beth Ellen looked back at her.

  “Anyway, what’s there?” asked Harriet.

  “Where?” said Beth Ellen, knowing full well what she meant.

  “BIARRITZ!” screamed Harriet. “BETH ELLEN, SOMETIMES YOU GET ON MY NERVES!”

  “Well,” said Beth Ellen, thinking: My mother is in Biarritz.

  “Listen,” said Harriet patiently as though to a little child, “you’re only twelve. You’ll get over this.”

  “I will not.”

  “You have to. What do you want to do? Sponge off somebody?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll be boring. You’ll be a very boring person.” Harriet was getting very red in the face. “No one will come and see you. I certainly won’t come and see you. I’ll be working. I won’t have time for that nonsense. You’ll be asking me to look at your babies’ pictures. You’ll ask everybody to look at these dumb snapshots all the time and nobody will want to look.” Harriet stopped rather suddenly, having realized that she was screaming. What is the matter with me? she thought; I don’t care what she does.

  “I’m going to have lots of babies and go to Biarritz,” said Beth Ellen with authority and rolled over on her stomach again.

  There was silence. Well, thought Harriet. She picked up the notebook in which she made notes on people and wrote:

  YOU JUST NEVER KNOW ABOUT PEOPLE. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO DO THAT? SHE’S FLIPPED HER WIG. MAYBE I SHOULD CONSIDER HAVING BABIES. DO I WANT A BABY? WHAT WOULD I DO WITH IT? IT WOULD ALL THE TIME BE CRYING AND WANTING TO BE FED. AND ALL THOSE DIAPERS. WELL.

  She put down both books and lay on her back. She tried to stare right into the sun. She couldn’t.

  hree days later Beth Ellen was sitting in her room, writing herself a letter.

  Dear Me,

  Why am I so different? Why am I never happy? Is everybody like this or is it just me? I am truly a mouse. I have no desire at all to be me.

  Good-bye,

  Mouse

  The telephone rang. Beth Ellen heard the maid answer downstairs, then call to her, “Miss Beth! Miss Beth, for you.” She got up and went into her grandfather’s room to answer because there wasn’t a phone in her room.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.” It was Harriet.

  “Why don’t you come over?” Beth Ellen asked, feeling suddenly lonely.

  “It’s raining,” said Harriet with great irritation. “You come over here because Harry can bring you and I’ve only got the bicycle.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, when?”

  “I have to ask.” Beth Ellen felt very vague.

  “Well, ask!” Harriet seemed, sometimes, to be losing patience.

  “Okay” Beth Ellen put the phone down and ran to her grandmother’s room. She opened the door a crack and saw that the room was dark. Her grandmother was asleep. She closed the door softly and ran all the way down to the kitchen. The cook was making lunch for the maid and the chauffeur.

  “Can you take me to Harriet’s?” she asked the chauffeur, who was behind the newspaper.

  “You’re not to leave before you speak to your grandmother,” said the maid.

  “Why?” Beth Ellen’s eyes got very large.

  “Something has happened,” said the chauffeur, leaning around his paper with his face a wide grin full of teeth.

  “What?”

  “Never mind him,” said the cook. “It’s just that she has something to tell you and she wants to tell you right after her nap. She left word.”

  The last two words were ominous. Whenever her grandmother left word about anything it was serious. She turned abruptly and left the kitchen. She ran upstairs to the phone.

  “I can’t come,” she said into the phone.

  “Why?”

  “I have to stay home. My grandmother wants to see me. Something has happened.” Beth Ellen began to feel important.

  “WHAT?” Harriet screeched into the phone. She couldn’t bear to have things happen that she knew nothing about.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, when you find out, will you call me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Well, so long.”

  “Wait! Harriet?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Listen, Harriet, I tried it. Remember you said I ought to try writing again? Well, I tried it and I hate it.”

  “What did you write?”

  “A letter to myself.”

  “A letter is not writing” said Harriet sternly. “Anyway, what did it say?”

  “It’s private.”

  “Well, what are you telling me about it for, stupid?”

  “Because I thought I’d try again like you said but I hate it.”

  “Listen, Beth Ellen”—Harriet sounded very severe—“you’ll have to find a profession sooner or later, you know.”

  “I don’t want to work. I hate it.”

  “You have to do something! You can’t just lie around.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just can’t!” Harriet really screamed this time.

  “But I have to do something I like!” Beth Ellen felt frantic.

  “All right!” Then Harriet seemed to calm down. “Don’t worry, we’ll think of something. Listen, by the way, does anybody at your house read the Bible?”

  “Why?”

  “WHY ARE YOU SO DENSE SOMETIMES?” Harriet’s yell must have been heard in Kansas. She continued, patiently: “We have to find out if all these quotes are from the Bible and if they are, we’re dealing with a religious fanatic. We have to know who to LOOK FOR!” Her voice got away with her again at the end.

  “I’ll ask,” said Beth Ellen wearily.

  “Okay. Good work. Now, call me right away when you know what your grandmother says.”

  “Okay,” said Beth Ellen, thinking: That is absolutely none of Harriet Welsch�
��s business what my grandmother says.

  “Okay, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Beth Ellen hung up the phone and looked around the room. It was all a dark blue and in the half light looked spooky. Everything was blue—the heavy, brocaded bedspread, the thick rug, the heavy drapes that were never drawn to let in the day. Her grandfather had been dead for seven years. She remembered him with a curious emotion. He had given her a quarter every time he had seen her, which was nice; but before he gave her the quarter, he always asked if she was head of her class at school. She would say Yes and get the quarter. Curious, because she hadn’t been in school at the time, being only four. She had loved him.

  She looked over at the niche in the wall. There was a small altar stand with a huge Bible sitting open on it. On the stand also were two candles and a little place to kneel. Over the altar, on the wall, was a small, delicate painting of the Virgin. Beth Ellen had wondered about this, and her grandmother had told her that the house had formerly belonged to Catholics and that she had just left everything where it was because it was pretty.

  Beth Ellen sat thinking about Catholics. What did it feel like to be a Catholic? Did you feel more than other people? Maybe prettier things. Maybe your head was filled with prettier things. She thought of being in church with her grandmother. She went over to the Bible and looked at the open page. Did her grandmother read the Bible? Yes, but not this one, one by her bed. Did the cook, the chauffeur, the maid? I don’t know, she thought, and I don’t really care. She noticed that the book was open to Psalms. She read a line: “O sing unto the Lord a new song.” I wish I had a new one to sing, she thought. She suddenly became intensely bored and wanted to close the book. She didn’t, however, for it was prettier open. The only person I like in the whole Bible is Jeremiah, she thought wearily.

  She looked around. She went over and closed the door. Then she took from under the bed a book she liked much better. It was a book she was seldom without, and she hid it in this room because no one came in except to clean and they evidently never cleaned under the bed. She opened the door quietly, planning to take the book back to her room. She saw the maid coming out of her grandmother’s room. The maid beckoned to her.