Secret Language

by Monica Wood

  “We were at the Sheraton Centre.”

  “Except that one. Damn!” He pauses for breath. “Just tell me one thing—is she or isn’t she?”

  “Well—”

  “No, no, don’t say it! I’m on my way. Should I bring cannoli?”

  “Stewart, I’m exhausted. It’s been a long four days.” She checks her watch. “There’s no way you can get here before ten.”

  “But I’ve been dying here.”

  “I’m practically unconscious, Stewart. How about tomorrow instead?”

  “Connie, don’t do this to me.”

  She gives up. “All right.”

  “Two hours, sweetheart.”

  She hangs up, then rises heavily, wandering around her apartment, struck by what she thinks of as its hardiness. She hasn’t been gone long enough for the apartment to need her. There is food in the freezer and milk in the fridge. The furniture is exactly as she left it and there is no dust. Her coleus plant, long accustomed to sporadic watering, hasn’t even begun to droop. This is how her apartment looks in her absence. She lifts one of the plant’s leaves: it would take a long time for something to die here without her.

  By the time Stewart arrives she is desperate for company and flings open the door. “Jesus, you look awful,” she says.

  “Why, thank you.” He hands her a box of cannoli and two bottles of wine.

  “I’m serious, Stewart. Are you sick?”

  “Listen to the Mistress of Doom.” He smiles faintly. “I’m not sick, just depressed.”

  She follows him into the kitchen, where he immediately finds a couple of plates and a corkscrew. It pleases her unreasonably that he knows his way around. He has not come for the story of Isadora James; he has come for solace to this apartment, these self-sufficient rooms.

  “What’s going on in Boston?” she asks.

  He divides the cannolis and puts three on each plate. “Everybody’s out of town.” Stewart has a lot of friends, gives a lot of parties.

  “Lonesome?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “James and Michael moved out to Brookline, can you believe it?”

  “A regular Ozzie and Harriet.” She sits down next to him at the table. “You want some dinner? I thawed some chicken.”

  “Nah.”

  “Come on, Stewart, what is it?”

  “Forget it. Is Isadora James your sister or what?”

  “I think so.”

  Stewart’s eyes fly open. “Oh my God.”

  Connie laughs. “I know, I can’t believe it either. She’s only about five feet high, but other than that she looks just like us.”

  “Then she must be gorgeous.” He’s trying.

  “She sings blues, can you imagine?” Connie can’t stop smiling. “I’m supposed to call her tonight, late, after her gig. She wants to make sure I made it back safe, isn’t that sweet?”

  “Sweet,” Stewart says. “This is amazing. I was sure she’d turn out to be some kind of wing nut with a theater fixation.” He pours some wine, staring into the glasses. He looks up, frowning. “Listen, are you working Thanksgiving?”

  “I guess so,” she says, puzzled. She always works holidays. “Stewart, Thanksgiving’s almost five months away.”

  He hands her a glass. “With all this business about long-lost sisters in the air I’ve been thinking about my own family.”

  “And?”

  “Things haven’t been the greatest since I came bursting out of the closet last year. I mean, I think Mom still loves me”—he offers a sheepish smile—“but I’m not so sure about Dad and David. David the house builder, David the procreator, David the real man.”

  “They don’t think that.” But they probably do. People think all kinds of things.

  “I offered to come home for Thanksgiving—it’s been years—and I got the brush-off from my own mother.”

  “Ouch.”

  “David’s going to be there, of course, with his precious wife and precious son. And Aunt Hallie, who still thinks I’m looking for the right woman. I guess Mom figures I’d rain on everyone’s parade.”

  “She knows this five months ahead of time?”

  “It might as well be five years. Some things don’t change.”

  Connie looks at Stewart’s eyes, his frail blonde lashes. “We could have Thanksgiving together, Stewart. I haven’t spent a holiday on the ground in years.”

  He brightens. “You think?”

  “Sure. We can invite Isadora, too.” It’s an exhilarating thought.

  “Jesus, a real holiday. Would Faith come? And her kids?”

  “I doubt it.” She picks up the plates of cannoli and sets them on top of the refrigerator.

  “Hey,” Stewart says.

  “First you have to eat some real food.” She takes some chicken out of the fridge and places it on the counter.

  “Do you have any idea how compulsive you are?”

  “Yes,” she says, chopping the chicken into neat cubes.

  “I think it’s neurotic. This place is so clean it’s creepy.”

  “You’re a fine one to be talking neurotic, Stewart.”

  “Too true.” He gets up, opens a cupboard, and slides the wok from its shelf. “So, what about Thanksgiving? You, me, and Isadora? That’s it?”

  “Faith always goes to the Fullers’.”

  “Even though she’s divorced?”

  “Old habits, I guess.” She pours some oil in the wok. “Besides, Faith isn’t exactly sold on Isadora.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. You should have seen her, Stewart. You’d think Isadora had fangs.”

  “Maybe she’s jealous.” He pauses. “I am, a little.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Maybe she thinks Isadora will take you away from her.”

  Connie gives Stewart a kiss on the cheek. “Stewart, you always make me feel wanted.” He smiles. “Anyway,” she says, “Faith’s not jealous.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’re not like that.” She throws the chicken into the wok and steps away as it hisses against the oil. Phoebe taught her to do this long before woks were popular. She remembers learning fondue, how elegant she thought she was, dipping pieces of bread in hot cheese.

  “But it’s been just the two of you, Connie, and now you’re three.”

  “Just the two of us doesn’t mean what you think, Stewart. It’s two chairs in the same room—sometimes I think it’s no more personal than that.” She’s amazed at how this sounds. “That’s just the way it is.” She thinks of the day she left Faith and Joe’s for good, her inexplicable sadness.

  “All right, it’ll be just you, me, and Isadora. Oh, this is going to be great! We’ll get a big turkey, some pumpkins—give me a piece of paper.”

  While Stewart writes out a detailed menu for a five-months-away dinner, Connie sets out two place mats, some silverware, and cloth napkins. She scoops out some food from the wok and arranges it just so. She sets the steaming plate in front of him. “Here, eat this.” She gets a plate for herself and lights a candle.

  Stewart stops writing and raises his glass. “Here’s to finding it.”

  She clicks her glass with mighty purpose.

  Long after they have eaten, Connie closes herself in her bedroom and places a call to Brooklyn, her hand tight around the receiver, afraid to find Isadora changed overnight.

  “Isn’t this just the most amazing thing,” Isadora says. “Here we are talking on the phone like any sisters anyplace in the world, and a week ago we hardly knew the first thing about each other.”

  “It is amazing,” Connie says, relieved. She loves Isadora’s voice; it’s so dark and musical. “I was just telling my friend Stewart that.”

  “I’ve thought of a thousand questions since you left, Connie,” Isadora says. “I’ve been looking at the pictures of Billy, and somehow after meeting Chris I can see him better, I can see just what he must have been like in person, so tall and dashing, and his voice
, I can imagine that, too, smooth and syrupy, a music-hall voice, not a bar voice like mine, but just as strong, as sweet and golden as a voice can get.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Did he sound like that?”

  “It’s been such a long time, Isadora.”

  “Was he a tenor or a baritone?”

  “Tenor.”

  “Democrat or Republican?”

  “I think—actually, they weren’t much on politics.”

  “Did he bring you gifts when he came back from a tour?”

  “No.” She hears Isadora waiting. “They brought us with them.”

  “No kidding? Wow, that must have been something, going to all those cities, meeting all those people …”

  “Well—”

  “Did you ever meet anybody famous?”

  Connie is getting the feeling that Isadora has her thousand questions written on a piece of paper. “Well—”

  “How did he dress? Did he dress up? I bet he dressed up—I love that.”

  “Everybody did in those days. It was all a lot more formal.”

  To Connie these questions have nothing to do with Billy. What does dressing up have to do with a man whose presence could be remote and stultifying at the same time? What do gifts have to do with the things she ached for?

  “What famous people did you meet?”

  “Let’s see … Helen Hayes once. And Jessica Tandy. Hume Cronyn was in—”

  “Aren’t those people all dead? Did you meet anybody who’s still alive?”

  “Actually, they’re not all—”

  “Did he sing you to sleep? I can just imagine being sung to sleep by a singer. My father’s voice was about as musical as traffic.”

  “Speaking of music, how did your gig go?”

  “The manager stiffed me for half the pay.”

  “Isadora, that’s awful.” Connie draws herself up like a mother cat, ready to protect and defend. She’s glad Stewart isn’t here to see how foolish she looks.

  Isadora laughs. “I’ll make him sorry someday when he’s dying to book me. So, did Faith like me or what?”

  “Well—”

  “I know she didn’t. I’ve been racking my brain ever since but I can’t imagine why not.”

  “It’s not that she doesn’t like you, Isadora. Faith does everything slow.”

  “Well, you’d know better than me.” She stops for breath. “Was Billy religious?”

  And round they go, until Connie is exhausted from evading answers. Finally they run out of talk.

  “What if I call you tomorrow night?” Isadora says. “We can take turns.”

  “I’m working tomorrow, but I’ll call you the minute I get back.”

  “Just a sec,” Isadora says. Connie hears the rustle of paper. “Tell me your schedule.”

  Connie tells her, flattered at being pinned down to paper. This is even more than she expected. She likes the idea of being tracked. When Isadora hangs up, Connie stays on the line, listening to that odd pocket of silence before the dial tone fully disconnects them.

  She finds Stewart propped up on her sleep sofa, reading the paper and drinking wine, the shadow of his eyelashes skewed across his face from the light of a single lamp. She climbs onto the blankets, accepts a glass, and sits with him.

  “A little sister,” she says. “I can hardly believe it.”

  He puts the paper down. “You get to start all over again.”

  They are silent for a while. She listens to the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the living room clock; she suddenly feels her apartment might give over to the most domestic impulses.

  “Stewart,” Connie says. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t gay.”

  “Hah! You and me both, sweetheart.”

  “Do you think we’d still be friends?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean do you think we’d be lovers instead?”

  “Can’t you be both?”

  “I never have.” She pours some more wine. “Isadora’s got tons of friends. She lives with four or five roommates and a cat. She just seems so, I don’t know, normal.”

  “Because she has lots of friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have lots of friends,” Stewart says. “So do I. A lot of good it does us.”

  She looks at him.

  “Where are they when you really need them?” he says.

  If he’s talking about her she doesn’t want to know.

  “Stewart, I’m not sure I know how to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be Isadora’s sister.”

  “But you’re already—oh, right, chairs in a room.”

  “I want to, though. It feels good.”

  “True confession, Connie.”

  “Shoot.”

  He sits up. “I’ve been having this little fantasy.”

  “Go.”

  “About having a kid.” His face is still.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Why not? You’ve thought about it, too.”

  “I think about a lot of things.”

  He smiles shyly. “What I mean is, I’d want you to be the mother.” Connie sits back on her haunches, staring at him. “Of course we’d have to figure out a way to do it without actually having sex,” he says.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He laughs. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “I don’t. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Ridiculous, but sweet.”

  He drops back against the cushions. “That’s only one of my fantasies, anyway.” He grins. “The other one involves that new guy at Air France.”

  Connie laughs. “I saw him first.” She cups her glass fervently, as if the wine contained information. “You know what, Stewart? I’m glad Isadora’s so young. I swear I feel almost motherly. Big sisterly, anyway.”

  Stewart nods. “I’d spend more time with my nephew if they’d let me near him.”

  After the bottle is gone, she tucks him in and kisses his forehead. “Here’s to finding it, old friend,” she whispers, and goes to bed.

  Near morning, the deep sound of Stewart’s breathing lazing in through her bedroom door, Connie opens her eyes in the dark. She has been dreaming of stage curtains rising and falling, too quickly to see what they hid or revealed. In the gray light appear the familiar shapes of her room: the nightstand, its brass knob, the lacy hem of Grammy Spaulding’s doily, the slim profile of the table lamp. In her half-sleep she reaches for the telephone, and by the time she has dialed the first digit of Faith’s number she recognizes where she is, that it is too late to call and too early, and that she hasn’t the smallest idea what she might have wanted to say.

  FOUR

  The club is small and dusky; it smells of spirits, dark wood, the hot street. Armand loiters over a whiskey and water while Connie and Stewart share a bottle of wine. Connie lolls in their company, in the sight of her little sister, who is curled over a well-worn guitar, her blonde hair cloudy under the weak stage light. Her voice, its low timbre drowsing over old blues, quiets the scattered crowd. Behind her a thin black man thumps on a bass guitar.

  This is the last set. Connie watches Isadora’s slender fingers, the fragile arms, the soft lines that appear between her eyebrows as she sings. She is small, but mighty somehow, transformed under the light. Billy and Delle had been able to change like that, and Connie is aware of wanting Isadora in the huge and foggy way she had once wanted them.

  Armand leans over, touching Connie’s shoulder. “She reminds me of Billy, so help me,” he whispers. She nods dumbly. She claps until her palms sting, the room a gentle, wine-tipped whirl.

  Isadora lays her guitar in a case and steps down from the stage. She aims a bright smile at Connie’s table, then steps past them to greet a gathering of friends, late arrivals who have commandeered several tables in the back. Connie listens to them laugh and talk, a society all to themselves, their voices pumped with the amplitude of a shared and careless past.
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  “She’s great, isn’t she great?” Connie says to Stewart and Armand. “She’s the best damned singer I ever heard, I swear, she’s great.”

  Stewart regards her patiently. “Gee, Connie, have another drink.”

  “You don’t think she’s great?” Her question is a challenge, one she finds exhilarating; she’s defending her little sister. It’s an unnecessary bravado, a throwback to her adolescence. She is speaking loudly and knows it, hoping Isadora can hear.

  “She is good,” Stewart says. “I’m impressed.”

  Armand smiles, lifts his drink. “I’m still here, an old man out past his bedtime.” He cranes his neck. “Is she coming over?”

  “Give her five minutes,” Connie says. “You have to keep the fans happy.” She speaks as if from a store of intimate knowledge—about performance politics, psychology, and Isadora.

  But Isadora has happily installed herself amidst a stable of friends, a boisterous, adoring throng. They rock their heads back, wave their hands around, transforming themselves into a kinetic cloak of movement that seems almost calculated to isolate Isadora, who sits somewhere in its center.

  “I’m done,” Stewart says, rising. “I’ve got to be at the airport by nine.” Armand gets up, too, rubbing his eyes, the skin over his fists loose, the knuckles swollen. He is indeed an old man.

  Connie wants to stay, in the hope that she and Isadora might enjoy last call together, just the two of them, but she can see this is not going to happen. She has imagined over and over just such a scene: a late-night unburdening over a glass of wine in a restaurant, or a bar like this one, or Connie’s hotel room, or a private corner of Isadora’s apartment in Brooklyn. In this scene, Isadora’s face opens into a smile, her features obscured by smoke (the bar) or low light (the restaurant, hotel room, apartment), except for her eyes, which are trained on Connie with the clarity of an emerald while she expresses her deepest needs and dreams.

  Their phone conversations have become more sporadic, even a little stilted. Connie’s made-up answers are beginning to contradict themselves. One night she told Isadora about a family outing to the zoo, and a few nights later manufactured an anecdote about Billy’s fear of large animals. Isadora even sounds bored sometimes, though it could be her late hours.