Secret of Lies

by Barbara Forte Abate

  “Where was this?” I asked, feeling oddly flustered as I reached for the radio, briefly touching the icy coldness of his fingers as I took it from his hand.

  “The beach. I found it a couple days ago. I thought it might be yours.”

  “Oh … I’m glad you did. Eleanor would’ve killed me if I’d lost it,” I said, and Jake smiled. “But how come you brought it now? It’s pouring,” my fingers trembled as I signed the words. While I was unequivocally ecstatic to see him, I did question his urgency to deliver a transistor radio at the height of a near typhoon.

  “I have a motive.”

  He’d come to see me.

  “My car broke down a couple of miles up the road.”

  “Your car?”

  The bubble instantly burst with the confirmation he’d probably been out on a date. I felt a sharp stinging sensation behind my eyes, at once willing him gone so I could run up to my room and hide in the darkness, so instantaneous was the plunge in my spirits.

  “I had the radio in the car–an exchange for a phone call. My grandfather doesn’t have a phone,” he added before I had a chance to ask the obvious.

  “Oh,” I said dully, not bothering to sign the word. “Phone’s over there.” I pointed to where it hung on the wall alongside the Frigidaire.

  Remembering I was still holding the umbrella like a circus clown on the verge of launching into some ridiculous routine, I hastily laid it on the table before turning back to see Jake still standing where I’d left him, an amused hint of a smile on his face.

  “Right there,” I said, again indicating the telephone’s location though he made no move toward it.

  “Do you mind?” he gestured with an ever-widening grin.

  “Oh, yeah. Sure, of course.” My face burned with embarrassment. “Who should I call?”

  “Vick’s garage.” He scribbled on the notepad positioned beside the telephone.

  I picked up the receiver only to be confronted with the eerie sound of nothingness. Dead, empty, vacuous silence. “There’s no dial tone. The wires must be down.”

  A flicker of something like exasperation passed over his face, but he merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “You don’t have to go yet. You can wait here for a little while. They might be working on the lines right now.”

  He didn’t immediately reply as if taking a moment to weigh his situation, his eyes looking past me into the living room.

  “Here,” I offered, pulling a clean dishtowel from a cabinet drawer beside the sink. “Maybe you can dry your hair a little.”

  “Thanks.” He rubbed his head with a series of quick vigorous motions before handing back the towel. “Where is everyone?”

  “A party.”

  “Everyone?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re by yourself?” He lifted an eyebrow in apparent surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “I should’ve guessed. That’s why you were blasting the music,” he grinned with the statement formed by his fingers.

  It was my turn to be surprised.

  “How could you tell?”

  “My secret.”

  “How? Tell me.” I forced a smile, my mind immediately composing a desperate prayer that he hadn’t somehow seen me dancing.

  He hesitated, a sheepish smile moving across his lips. “I felt the vibrations in the floor.”

  “Really?” Then, “That’s amazing,” I said, impressed by the realization of yet another of his uncommon capabilities while at the same time disappointed. The hope forever alive in my mind that he would one day be the recipient of a genuine miracle, even if it was only to have some minimal portion of his hearing restored.

  The quiet pressed over us where we sat on the living room couch alone in our separate silences. As much as I wanted Jake here, now that he was, I wasn’t exactly certain what to do with him. Despite the decidedly impersonal context of our conversation, the very act of signing had taken on a kind of disquieting intimacy. Quite unlike the ease of spoken language, where no such requirement existed for continuous eye-to-hand-to-mouth-to eye-to-hand contact, there was far too much intensity involved in my communications with Jake to ever have labeled ours as casual conversation.

  “Let’s dance,” I said, a request no less surprising to myself then it was to him. I turned away without allowing him an opportunity to refuse, quickly selecting a record from the stack I’d left on the floor and dropping it onto the turntable.

  He came up beside me. “I can’t dance.”

  “Everybody can dance.”

  “You forgot I can’t hear? I can’t dance if I can’t hear the music.”

  “No I didn’t forget,” I smiled. “But you said before you could feel it–right?”

  “No.”

  “Jake ... just try.”

  “I don’t dance. I’d feel stupid dancing to something I can’t hear.”

  “Why? There’s no one here.”

  “You’re here.”

  “Come on. You’ll feel it. Just try,” I pressed, reaching for his hand, his fingers no longer icy cold, but now comfortably warm.

  “Your other hand goes here,” I said, though I needn’t have told him. He knew what to do, placing his hand on my lower back.

  I continued to smile my encouragement in the face of his apparent discomfort as we moved slowly, cautiously, toward the center of the room where there was less furniture to bump against. After he’d stepped on my toes for the fourth or fifth consecutive time he attempted to break away, but I kept him there, continuing to smile and hold fast.

  His gaze dropped to my lips for the briefest instant and I felt my cheeks grow hot in immediate mortification, right then remembering Eleanor’s radiant red lipstick and hoping that by some miracle a goodly portion had been eaten away during supper, and the remainder melted into thin air during my earlier dancing frenzy.

  The distance between us lessened, the synchronization of our movements becoming less awkward and mechanically contrived–skin, breath, nerves, ever aware of his nearness. Because this was Jake I was dancing with, not my father or Uncle Cal. Jake.

  The question of who was leading was impossible to answer as much as it held no importance, my senses coming steadily unhinged by the feel of his back and shoulders moving under my hands, the gentle press of his leg against my hip as we turned with the fluid ease of music box dancers. My insides melting like snow beneath a myriad of swirling golden motes dusting my skin like pin dots of light, so I wasn’t quite certain when it happened that he was holding me closer, his hand touching the back of my neck. And I laid my cheek against the soft fabric of his rain damp T-shirt, feeling the rhythmic beating of his heart against my face, his fingers moved to touch my hair–tenderly stroking the nape of my neck–a flux of unfamiliar sensations causing me to tighten my hold on his shoulders.

  And it was just as I felt the full circle of my happiness closing around me like the arms of a perfect embrace, when Jake gently tugged a fistful of my hair, tipping my head back as he lowered his face to kiss me. And nowhere–not even within the most secret depths of my imagination–could I have anticipated or prepared for the surging tide swelling up from the soles of my feet, flooding the floor of my stomach, rising and flowing outward into his touch, turning my knees to gelatin and buckling me against him.

  He placed a hand on either side of my jaw and stood back slightly, studying my face as though searching for some vital misplaced part of himself–holding me there with a question in his eyes until I reached up to grasp the hands cradling my face, pulling him back against me, giving him my answer.

  When he kissed me again it was like being drawn into his skin. He tugged the tail of my sleeveless cotton blouse loose from where it tucked into the waist of my jeans–a warm shudder running along my spine as his hands moved slowly over my bare back.

  “I’m crazy about you, Jake. Crazy … crazy … crazy,” I whispered against his neck with the confidence of knowing that he heard only silence, certain I would never h
ave had the courage to speak the words had he been able to hear them.

  “Jake–Jake,” I tugged on his arm insistently, struggling to rouse him from a dead sleep.

  “They’re home–hurry,” I said without taking the time to sign the words as I heard the kitchen door open and slam shut.

  He seemed to immediately decipher the panicked urgency poured over my face like spilled wax, rapidly pulling on his sneakers, laces left untied and dangling when I grabbed his hand and propelled him across the room toward the only probable escape route.

  Two o’clock. Hopefully they’d go directly to bed and by the time Eleanor went up and saw that I wasn’t there, I’d already have had time to sneak Jake out safely. I’d simply say that I’d fallen asleep on the couch, which oddly enough, was more truth than lie.

  We held ourselves quiet and still in the deep shadows of the hallway, barely chancing to breathe as the agitated tap of high heels echoed sharply across the bare wood floor leading toward the stairs. That will be Eleanor. Aunt Smyrna and Uncle Cal would follow.

  Again, the kitchen door opened and I listened attentively for the sound of incoming footsteps, now anxious that they might decide to head into the living room for a nightcap rather than up to bed where they belonged.

  “What’re you going to do? She’s furious.”

  Eleanor?

  “Frankly, I don’t care anymore.”

  “But don’t you think you should’ve danced with her at least once? No one likes to look the fool in front of their friends–and definitely not their enemies.”

  “Don’t worry about her, all right? That’s my problem.”

  There was a long unsettling pause and we held anxiously to the safety of our concealment, Jake patiently awaiting my cue for his escape; the irregular shallow reach of my breathing nevertheless strong enough to engulf me with an uncertain sense of dread.

  “Come on, we’d better go up to bed,” Uncle Cal said at length.

  “But I’m not even tired,” Eleanor giggled.

  “Nor am I, but you can only have so much fun in one night, my dear girl.”

  “Oh? You really believe that?”

  “What do you think?” I heard my uncle chuckle softly as their steps passed away from us, through the hall and up the stairs.

  Dashing into the now vacant kitchen, I spied Jake’s still wet jacket where he’d left it draped over a kitchen chair, immediately concerned it had been noticed as I snatched it up and handed it to him.

  “I’m sorry you have to walk home.”

  “It’s not far. The rain stopped.” He moved to the door then turned back, folded my fingers into his hand, hastily pulling me against him, offering a fleeting kiss before slipping out the door and into the lingering cover of early morning.

  I stood staring after him, watching the line of his back dissolve into the murky film of darkness–every fiber longing to absorb him back to me–until a slamming door somewhere upstairs all at once snapped me back to the reality that he was gone and our night together now fully ended.

  I’d half-expected someone to reappear downstairs in search of me, but the house remained silent. The only sound coming from the wind racing beyond the windows.

  Tiptoeing back to the living room, I curled into the cushions of the sofa where Jake and I had fallen asleep wrapped together, at once comforted by the scent of him still lingering there.

  There was so much to think over. So much of this evening yet to be deciphered. I knew I’d overheard something that wasn’t meant for me. Something vital. But I wasn’t prepared for it now. Let it sit and wait in the shadows until later; for some other time when I had more of an inclination to sort through and figure things out–analyze and digest it. Because right now there was nothing more urgent than the pressing ache to relive the previous hours … the taste of Jake’s lips, his hands, the scent of his skin … pulling it back like the quavering edges of a half forgotten dream … holding as tight as I could before it slipped loose and melded into the place of newly forged memories.

  “Jake,” I whispered, simply to hear the sound of his name on my lips. And not even in the deepest corner of my heart was there any question that I loved him. Not only now, but surely forever.

  The gradually lightening sky had begun to reveal the faintest slivers of purple light reaching across the horizon. And watching the subtle emergence of daybreak, I was struck by the ominous beauty of the red stained streaks–the way they stretched down towards the ocean like seeping ink, layering the water with color.

  But as I continued to stare out beyond the windows, a thick mass of dark storm clouds quickly slid across the sky, clinging together threateningly to obscure the rising sun and diminish the morning light. And then all at once the palate of brilliant reds and purples was gone–all of it shrouded in a disconcerting shade of grey.

  Chapter Twelve

  My insides flip-flopped madly between twin poles of eagerness and anxiety at the thought of seeing Jake again; increasingly fearful of the tragic possibility that he hadn’t felt the hours of the previous night in the same way that I had. And until I actually saw him in the light of day there was no way of knowing or even guessing the precise scope and subsequent direction of all those things now forever changed between us; wholly unsure as to what emotion would be there waiting in the depths of his eyes–whether the bottomless warmth of adoration, or cold shadow of regret–certain only of which it was I so desperately wanted to see.

  It was early, just past seven o’clock on Sunday morning when I ventured down to the beach. As I’d hoped, I found myself alone–the shoreline below our house and further up blessedly empty.

  With my blue jeans rolled up to just below my knees, I walked barefoot along the water’s edge, picking up shells and winging them back into the angrily churning surf–all the while fighting the urge to cry. Because somehow I’d lost all control over my senses–frustration maybe, or just the unquenchable yearning for something I had yet to fully comprehend. And I paused, envisioned buckling my knees to plop into the sand, wailing long and loud like some pitiful grounded creature churned up from the sea, releasing the burden of whatever this thing was pressing down like a curse.

  Instead, I continued walking.

  How was it even possible that everything about this summer felt both right and wrong at the same time? Being here in this place where life was so altogether removed from the customary tedium of days in Callicoon oftentimes left me feeling as if I were cheating on an important test–like living inside the walls of someone else’s yearnings–watching through a lens and enjoying moments and experiences I coveted for myself but couldn’t have.

  From the experience of previous years, I knew that once our vacation was over and we left for home I would reluctantly, but inevitably, fall back into the accustomed patterns and rhythms of my habitual life; everything about this place and the people connected to it fading away until the following year, when they would again be taken out, dusted off, and set in place for another summer. Except now, such a routine disconnect no longer felt probable. Too much had changed.

  Reaching the jetty, I walked far out along the rocks, lifting my chin to the faint spray of the breaking sea misting my face. How long I stood there, rooted to the spot by my debilitating trance of romantic pain and yearning expectation, I wasn’t certain. But it was only when I turned to leave that I saw him slowly approaching.

  I would wait until he reached me. There would be no racing toward him like a runaway train. Fight the urge. Reveal nothing. Wait … just wait. A granite sentinel planted on the rocks.

  But then he’d lifted his eyes and I’d faced him squarely, seen the smile on his mouth and in his eyes, and all at once I was moving forward–barely a heartbeat before I was falling headlong into his embrace. And he held me there in the silent and perfect circle of his arms; my body molded against his chest as though I had always been there.

  My happiness was full and satisfying in those remaining days. A rich golden light thoroughly satura
ting everything touched by its rays. Whether dozing beside Jake in a soft cradle of sand high in the dunes–our hands touching, the sun caressing our flesh like poured honey–fished from the rocks or walked along the shore, I was blissfully content. Simply being with him was enough.

  And when I wasn’t with him, I was consumed with thoughts of being with him. Ever aware of the threatening assurance of summer’s end now closing in with rapid precision.

  Despite the abundance of time I spent alone with Jake, no one in the house appeared to care or otherwise notice. Their lives were entangled in other things which didn’t yet involve me. Even the curious conversation I’d unwittingly overheard between Uncle Cal and Eleanor after their return home from the cocktail party had lost its importance, easily and effortlessly overshadowed by my own pressing matters of the heart.

  It wasn’t until several days later, when once again trapped inside the house by a rude and blustery sea storm, the tension between my aunt and sister became fiercely and inescapably apparent, and I could no longer slam shut the window or draw the shades over the recognition of how drastically our world had shifted.

  With Uncle Cal away as usual at his job in the city, the three of us now sat in the front room working on the two thousand-piece puzzle that had been spread out on the old card table for the entire summer thus far. In years previous Aunt Smyrna would have whirled through such a project within days of its leaving the box–straight edges completed in an afternoon, then buildings, landscape, sky, in that order–the entire glossy portrait finished, admired, and disassembled back into its cardboard container by the weekend. But as with so many other things which had come to pass in this season of unexplained mutations, Aunt Smyrna had altogether abandoned her once favored amusement in preference of the routine refilling of her glass from the impressive collection of liquor decanters arrayed and perpetually topped on a long table behind the sofa in the living room, rather than passing the hours piecing puzzles and reading entire libraries as her former self had always done. So that now, the cheerful picture of the quaint seaside village with its bright row of neatly docked sailboats and weather basted storefronts had barely begun to take shape.