Secret Language

by Monica Wood

  A burst of laughter detonates at the back table. “New Guard,” Stewart mutters cheerfully. “They’re everywhere.” Connie turns around. They are one merry bunch, Isadora dead center.

  Connie is beginning to suspect that her existence in the world has turned, for Isadora, into a mild, possibly unimportant disappointment. Still, she visits whenever she can, staying in a hotel uptown a couple of blocks from Armand’s apartment, commuting to and from Brooklyn by taxi to see Isadora. Isadora, who is weary of the subway, doesn’t come into Manhattan any more than she has to. On the one night she persuaded Isadora to meet for dinner in the Village, Connie waited nearly an hour at Washington Square while a heavily dressed man, with the precision of a robot, smashed an endless supply of light bulbs one by one on the sidewalk half a block away. Isadora eventually arrived, out of breath and aflutter with explanations having to do with roommates, phone calls, a neighbor’s lost keys. They went to a cafe on MacDougall Street that Isadora liked: noisy and crowded, bereft of intimate corners.

  Connie follows Armand and Stewart to the door, knowing that if she stays there’s a possibility she won’t be wanted. They stop by the noisy group of tables on their way out. Isadora jumps up.

  “Where are you going?” she says.

  Armand chuckles. “Home. This old boy needs some sleep.” He looks at Isadora and her friends kindly, but from the other side of a chasm of age and sensibility. Connie knows just how he feels. He takes Isadora’s hand. “You were marvelous, dear.”

  “You were,” Stewart adds. “Loved your stuff.”

  “Did you really?” She is flushed and shameless. “You’re not just saying that?”

  They repeat their compliments, while Connie waits, watching the table of friends. Finally she says, “I’m Connie.”

  “Oh!” Isadora says. “Everybody, this is Stewart and Armand, and my sister, Connie. Connie, this is—” She scans the dozen or so faces. “Well, this is everybody.” More raucous laughter erupts from the friends.

  “Hi,” Connie says. Most of them have already turned to each other. She remains, thinking of the next thing to say. She somehow expects something momentous to happen, having been introduced as Isadora’s sister.

  “Well, I guess we’re off,” she says to Isadora after no one else speaks. “You were the best.”

  Isadora, a hugger, hugs Connie. Connie breathes the fluffy hair, presses her hands against the delicate wings of Isadora’s shoulder blades. “I’m so proud,” she says, hoping Isadora will catch some import there, layers of meaning.

  Instead, she makes a face. “It’s a dumpy club. But life gets better.” She smiles. She believes it.

  The next day Connie, unannounced, drops by Isadora’s apartment, a sunny, two-story shambles in Park Slope where a bewildering number of roommates parade in and out. The rooms are large and cluttered, presided over by Isadora’s enormous tail-less cat, Bob. He sits in Isadora’s lap, his claws dug into her skinny thighs, staring at Connie with a cat’s hard judgment.

  “Nice cat,” Connie says. She is perched at the edge of a plaid couch, wearing a red sun dress and heels, feeling overdressed. Isadora is the picture of comfort in a long T-shirt cinched at the hips with a scarf. She barely looks eighteen.

  Isadora kisses the top of Bob’s head. “He’s my little baby. You should get one, Connie.”

  “I’m always away.”

  “Oh, right.” Bob shifts his weight and anchors himself to one of Isadora’s knees. The claws look painful but Isadora doesn’t seem to mind. “Do you ever get sick of traveling?”

  It sounds like small talk. It is. Connie makes a noncommittal gesture.

  “When I get my big break I’ll have to travel a lot,” Isadora says. “Poor Bob won’t like it one bit.” She kisses the cat’s head again, nuzzling the fur with her mouth. “What did you think of my bass player?”

  “Oh. He’s good.” She can hardly remember what he looks like.

  “We used to go out,” Isadora says. “We’re still friends.”

  Connie laughs. As far as she can tell, Isadora has gone out with a lot of men, including at least one of her roommates. It’s a familiar business, except for the part about staying friends. She thinks of Marcel, young and callow. “I know a guy in Paris who would adore you.”

  Isadora waves her hands. “I’m off men for a while.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Connie says. She sounds more cynical than she wants to.

  Two of the roommates emerge from upstairs, shouldering bicycles. They wave on their way out the door but do not stop to be introduced. Connie has an unexpected urge to run after them, asking What does she say about me? Does she say anything about me?

  “Don’t you think it was sweet of Armand to come last night?” Isadora says. “He reminds me a little of my father.”

  Connie looks up.

  “Not Billy.” She rearranges Bob once again. “Anyway, I think Armand’s an old sweetie.”

  Watching Isadora, Connie wonders if, had she lived Isadora’s life, she herself could have turned out this way: lounging in a deep chair with a big cat, friends calling at all hours, a belief that life gets better. She can’t imagine how she would function in an apartment like this one, even for one night.

  One of the roommates pokes her head in. “If Timmy calls, I’m on my way.”

  Isadora laughs. “Don’t blow it, Rosie.”

  The roommate makes a face and disappears. It occurs to Connie that Isadora must have things to do, that sitting here is a courtesy. She gets up. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Bob spills out of Isadora’s lap as she stands up. She calls a car service while Connie waits, studying her quick movements, the way she drums her fingers in the air, rehearsing without the guitar. “Come on, I’ll walk you down,” Isadora says, and Connie follows her into the hall and down the stairs, still watching her, the way her bracelets slide along her arm, the way her feet tap each step, barely making contact.

  Isadora reaches the street long before Connie, bouncing slightly on her toes. She’s been out half the night but her skin is bright, her eyes alert.

  “I was going to ask you something, Connie,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about my brilliant career.” She grins—a charming, self-deprecating twist of her lip—then turns abruptly serious. “I need a manager. Someone who knows people in this town, someone who can get me off this plateau I’ve been sitting on.”

  Connie considers her: the tiny smile, the self-conscious way she draws her hand through her hair. Is she asking for something? A succession of cars moves through the light at the corner but Isadora takes no notice. Connie watches, not wanting to miss her ride but also not wanting to catch it. Next door to Isadora’s building, the polished vegetables of a Korean market are piled into bins above the grimy sidewalk. Connie moves closer, lured by their simple beauty.

  “I thought you might know somebody here,” Isadora says. “Maybe somebody who worked with Billy—with your parents.” She sounds casual, but her eyes don’t move from Connie’s face. “You know, a show biz type.”

  Connie wheels back through time as a myriad of faces appears before her, dim and nameless. She tries to remember, desperate to come up with something. “I don’t know anyone but Armand.”

  Isadora makes a face. “He was no help. He doesn’t run in those circles anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought maybe Billy had an agent or something.”

  “He did.” Connie frowns. “Garrett Reese. But he was a theatrical agent. I don’t see how he could help you.”

  “Connections, Connie,” Isadora says. “Believe me, these guys all know each other.”

  “He must be at least sixty by now,” Connie says. “Probably retired. Besides, Billy and Delle weren’t exactly his favorite clients. He despised them at the end, and the feeling was more than mutual. He dropped them after they left Silver Moon.”

  Isadora plunges one hand into her purse and comes up with an envelope and a pencil. “Anything’s w
orth a shot,” she mutters, writing down Garrett’s name. “Maybe I can get something out of being Billy Spaulding’s daughter.”

  Connie steps back, blinking hard, as Isadora blathers on. “Being a performer is a bitch,” she says. “Maybe he wasn’t the nicest guy in the world, but I have a lot of respect for Billy, just for surviving. Your mother, too. They didn’t pick an easy path.”

  But they didn’t survive, Connie wants to say. They’re dead. She catches an incongruous whiff of fields and earth from the market’s colorful harvest.

  “It must have been exciting,” Isadora says, “growing up with all that commotion.” She sounds envious, as if she thinks with Connie’s life she’d be already famous.

  “They were quite the days,” Connie says. “I sat in Marlon Brando’s lap when I was five.”

  Isadora smiles politely. “Really?” Apparently Marlon Brando has lost some stature since the last time Connie told this story.

  A car slows. Isadora’s hand goes up instantly; she’s been watching after all. Connie moves toward the curb, staring hard at the street, ashamed of her long-ago lie.

  FIVE

  Settled on the porch steps, the dog’s soft head in her lap, Faith looks out over her yard: the bountiful feeders, the red impatiens crowding their pots, the hydrangeas’ snowball flowers already tinged with their dying pink. Mums and marigolds line the walk, solid and mute.

  It sometimes occurs to her that, unlike most people she knows, she has no inner life, no poetic core of certainty, no burning dot of conviction from which springs a lifetime of heedless, unaccountable choices. But her flowers and trees contradict her: surely her inner life is here, in this tended yard, in these colors that are doomed to disappear after the cold of autumn. Come spring she will begin again, digging in the dirt. Planting is her private tradition, her secret belief that life, in all its passages, contains the possibility of beauty, even hope.

  Before Faith hears the car, Sammy propels himself off the porch to wait at the end of the walk, ears pitched forward. More than once Faith has wished for an animal’s finely tuned senses, that talent for knowing what’s just ahead. Connie pulls over, waving out the window, her radio on. Since Isadora’s arrival in their lives, she has taken to dropping by Faith’s house unexpectedly, sometimes just for minutes, just long enough to say hello. Their conversations together are spare, as always, but Connie’s tone has become nonchalant, almost breezy, as if there were nothing between them but good fortune, as if the thing they had in common were happiness of an inherited kind.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” she says, coming up the walk.

  Faith smiles. “You live in the neighborhood.” She reaches for the dog. “Down, Sammy.”

  “He’s all right.” Connie pushes the dog away gently, petting his head to calm him. “Where is everybody?”

  “At the Fullers’. The end-of-summer barbecue.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  “I had things to do.”

  Connie sits down next to Faith. “I’m going to New York tonight and wondered if you wanted anything.”

  “What would I want?”

  “I don’t know,” Connie says. “Some decent wine? Some good chocolate, maybe.” She looks out at the yard. Faith wonders what she sees there. She wonders if sometime far from now her children might see a chrysanthemum in full bloom and think of her.

  “I don’t need anything. But thanks.”

  Connie makes an odd gesture with her wrist—an exacting little flick—that Faith remembers from long ago. It means she is disappointed.

  “Some chocolate would be nice,” Faith says. “Now that you mention it.”

  “Great.” Connie rummages into her purse for a pad and pencil. Chocolate for Faith, she writes, then keeps the pencil poised. “Any messages for Isadora?”

  Faith shakes her head. “She called here last night. Chris was the only one up.”

  A goldfinch lights on one of the feeders, then another.

  “Musicians’ hours,” Connie says.

  “We keep regular people’s hours.” Faith pets the dog, glad of his smooth fur, his silent company. The phone rings inside the house, but she makes no move.

  “Do you want me to get it?” Connie asks.

  “Let it ring.” She knows it’s Phoebe, or maybe one of the boys, wanting her at the barbecue. She listens until it stops.

  “Faith?” Connie taps the pad with her pencil. “Can you think of anything I could tell Isadora about Billy?”

  “You mean something good?”

  “Yes,” she says softly. She’s watching the finches, a band of them now, squabbling at the feeders. “Something good. A family story.”

  A blue-black grackle descends, scattering the flock. “I can’t think of anything, Connie,” Faith says. She wishes she could, but it’s like looking into a store window at the perfect gift that’s thousands of dollars out of reach. “Really. I’m sorry.”

  Connie keeps silent awhile, fidgeting on the step. “Didn’t they take us to a zoo or something once?” she asks finally. “I think I remember that.” Her tone contains that new nonchalance. An old image pierces Faith’s vision, an image of Connie trailing Billy, her blonde hair snarled behind one ear.

  “I can’t think of anything,” Faith says again.

  “I should go,” Connie says. But she doesn’t, yet. “Does she ever say anything about me?”

  “Who? Isadora?”

  “I just wondered.” She tucks her purse under her arm. “Sure you don’t want anything besides chocolate?”

  “She said she thought you were sweet.” This is a lie, and Faith is amazed at herself for telling it. When Isadora calls she talks mostly about herself.

  “Really?” Connie says.

  “And brave, too, going all over the world the way you do.” Faith thinks a minute. “She says you’re lucky to have so many friends. She thinks it’s a good reflection on you, that a lot of people like you.”

  “No kidding,” Connie says. She looks five.

  “And she likes your hair. It’s beautiful.”

  Connie takes a long swipe through her hair. “Well.”

  Faith follows Connie to her car and then waves her down the street. It is late now, fall just days away, a chill sweeping in from the bay which she can feel this far into town. Fall used to be her best time of year, the boys coming home from school with their stories. She had taken every step of childhood with them, and as they grew up, so did she; she thought of herself as a slow bloomer, still a bud. Now it is different: their adolescence has turned more private, the remaining steps a mystery.

  The finches are back, small and fierce and directed. She is suddenly cold. “Come on, Sammy,” she says. “Let’s go in.”

  She thinks about the barbecue, the voices shouting back and forth across the volleyball net. As if it would be gone by nightfall, Faith again takes in the sight of her burgeoning yard. She snaps a pink-tinged hydrangea from one of the bushes, then hurries up the steps, the flat, painted wood yielding nothing under her weight. She considers how immobile a house is, how everything you put into it stays there, how immune it is to change, how much more solid than a person.

  SIX

  Winter comes swift and early. Fall is long buried, its auburn leaves lost under a few hard inches of snow. In the stinging cold of her back yard, Faith braces herself against the icy air, shivering, one glove on, the other hand bare and held out, a scatter of sunflower seeds shining like onyx on her palm. Still as death, clucking softly, she watches the chickadees flutter around their preferred feeder-three tubes with a cover and bowl—a few inches from her outstretched fingers.

  This simple ritual, which she has been repeating twice a day, will, according to the book, bring the chickadees and perhaps the siskins to light on her hand. Bundled in an old, royal blue parka (something in a bright, recognizable color so the birds will come to know you, the book says), she stands the cold, the birds’ indifference, and the inherent foolishness of this act with the patience of
one who has no time but a well—a whole canyon—of faith.

  The chickadees dart back and forth, in their habit of taking one seed away at a time. Their lispy, quarrelsome voices connect her somehow to the world, and she loves them for their noisy presence, their beauty, their unflinching predictability. They give her an occasional glimpse of the world’s design.

  “Mom, we’re leaving,” Ben calls from the house. “Dad’s here.”

  It is Thanksgiving Day. She has told the boys she is going to Connie’s so they won’t feel bad leaving her alone. She returns to the house and shepherds them out the door with a couple of pies—her traditional contribution to the Fuller Thanksgiving—hoping to have them gone quickly, to spare them from witnessing whatever she is bound to feel. This will be her first Thanksgiving without them. Joe lingers on the porch, full of silent questions.

  “You know you’re welcome,” he says.

  She shakes her head, looking beyond the front door to where Brenda sits waiting in a green car. Joe’s truck has been banished for the day, unable to accommodate them all. Last year at this time there was no Brenda, no one Joe wanted to take into the family. He’d been dating, but the women were just names. Marianne. Gail. Then Brenda. The boys must be talking to Brenda from the back seat, for she smiles and nods without looking at them. Her hair, black like Joe’s, sprays out from her face, aimless in the dry, staticky cold. A finger of resentment lays itself on Faith’s heart as she imagines this woman at Joe’s table, in his bed, talking and talking, arms permanently outstretched, making it all look easy.

  Chris likes Brenda, Faith knows, but Ben will never say, thinking he’s being kind. She looks like a nice woman, and of course she must be.

  “Don’t you have to go?” Faith tells Joe, lifting her chin toward the car.

  “Right.”

  “Say hi to everyone.”

  Joe hesitates. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m great. The day’s all planned.”

  “I’m sorry I brought Brenda,” he says. “I didn’t know how else to do this.”

  “For God’s sake, Joe, you’ve been living with the woman for months. Why are you apologizing?”