Secret Language

by Monica Wood

  Connie gradually notices a high, incessant cheeping all through the trees next to the house. The birds are far from orderly, squabbling in loose bunches around the feeders, not seeming to mind her presence. She wonders if the birds think they know her, if they think she’s the one who puts out their seeds, the one who stood here like a statue all winter trying to lure them to her hand. They become bolder, several at once now flying right past her. They think I’m Faith, she decides, pleasing herself with the notion. Perhaps she and Faith have a common scent detectable only by birds, or perhaps a similar way of standing, or breathing; or something less visible, a way of existing in the world, a vibration earned in the womb.

  TWO

  Faith feels more comfortable behind her desk at Dr. Howe’s than anyplace else. Except for time out for babies, she has worked here all of her adult life. Her desk has a long-lived look, though this is not the desk she began with. Her first desk was wooden, schoolish, with heavy drawers and thick feet, and still smelled faintly of pencil shavings. She liked that desk, and the history she imagined it possessed. The new one is sleek and trim, with niches and gullies for computer supplies. Still, it has the appearance of an old friend, for it hosts a framed photograph of Joe and the boys that Joe Senior once took at the beach; a clay turtle that Ben made for her in kindergarten and a wooden candleholder that Chris made for her in Boy Scouts; a stash of hard candies in a glass bowl; two African violets in small red pots; and in a vase one perfect pheasant feather she found eight years ago at the far end of her back yard.

  The items on her desk and in the drawers could have been placed according to blueprints. Marion likes to tease her, but Faith doesn’t mind; she likes knowing exactly where these things are: the beach stone on the top shelf of her desk hutch, a ceramic box for loose change. And for reasons she has yet to understand, she has for nearly twenty years kept an orange chip from the beak of one of the lawn ducks from her mother’s trailer, hidden in a thumb-sized pillbox at the right rear corner of her desk.

  It’s closing time, her favorite time of day. Marion and Dr. Howe have gone home, leaving Faith here, musing at her desk. She looks around, at the neat stack of paper to tend to first thing on Monday, the watered plants, the put-away files and books. The rose-colored chairs in the waiting room are neatly pushed against the wall, the prints of flowers and birds shiny and silent in their frames. Lately the place has looked too tidy, even to her, at the end of the work week. Her own house looks this way since Connie left: its blissful order has the glossy look of a packed-up place, a place somebody is about to move away from.

  It is six o’clock and still light. The days are getting longer, and Faith cheers herself with the thought of digging in her garden until after dusk. The boys are gone tonight, at a Celtics game in Boston with their uncle Brian, a playoff game, one of the last of the season. She pictures them all hollering together in the stands, punching one another on the arm.

  When she steps into the crisp, blue evening, she discovers Joe’s truck in the parking lot, Joe himself leaning against it, exactly the way he used to lean against the red Corvair to drive her home. This lonesome sight, instead of taking her back, takes her forward: she finds herself aching for something that has not yet happened.

  His face is expectant but wary, as it has been for weeks. His having asked to come back looms above them like a lightning-struck tree about to fall.

  “Hi, lady.”

  She smiles. “Hi.”

  “I came to ask you out for dinner.” Deep lines have worked their way into his skin, and she notices for the first time a speckle of gray at his temples. It sometimes astonishes her that they could be any more than twenty. “Will you come out with me?” he asks. “I happen to know you’re free.”

  “No,” she says. “Let’s go home.” He opens the door. She gathers her skirt and slides across the seat as easily as an unrolling ribbon, as if she had been preparing for this very motion all day long.

  They face each other across the kitchen table. A swirl of steam billows out of their coffee cups, warm as the years between them now seem. They have been talking about the usual things, the family.

  After they run out of talk, Joe says, “Do you think we just did the easiest thing?” By the time she realizes what he means, he speaks again. “I can’t remember why we ever—looking at you now, I mean.”

  The room goes quiet, like twilight falling.

  “It’s funny,” he continues, “but I don’t think I’ve once in the last five years felt not married to you.”

  If pressed, she would have to admit the same. In some peculiar way she’d felt even more married after the divorce, as if divorce were nothing more than the second stage of marriage. They’d talked easier, somehow, divested of the burden of daily life.

  “You know how I used to picture us?” she says softly.

  “How?”

  “Facing each other over a fence.” She squints a little, trying to see it. “Your side was a big lawn party, a real bash, lots of music and kids and party hats and the volleyball net set up and the barbecue ready to go. ‘Come on over,’ you kept saying. ‘Hurry up.’ ” He is listening, hard, so she goes on. “My side was just a yard. An ordinary square of grass with nobody in it but me. A few flowers, a couple of trees.”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad,” he says, his eyes steady on her.

  She nods. “It was a hell of a party.”

  “I should have left you in your own yard.” He looks weary. “Maybe we could’ve lived like that for a lifetime, Faith, just holding hands over a fence.”

  “Maybe.” She rubs the spot on her hand where her wedding ring used to be. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you more. I was sorry then.”

  “Talk to me now.”

  She looks up. “It had nothing to do with—that woman. You thought I couldn’t forgive you, Joe, but it was myself I couldn’t forgive, for knowing what was going to happen to us, for not having enough—enough faith—to stop it.” Her voice coils into a near whisper. “When you told me about her, it was almost a relief. Finally you found the person you’d been hoping I might turn into.”

  “No,” he says. He puts his hands out for her to hold. “It was you I wanted.”

  “I couldn’t believe that.” His fingers are dented and hard from years of making solid, identifiable objects. “I didn’t have it in me to believe it.”

  “Why not?” he murmurs. “Why?”

  “It was you, Joe,” she says. “Who you were. Are.” She shakes her head, astonished by regret, confounded by the same nameless sorrows she’d felt at Connie’s bedside. “You and your traditions, your big heart, your perfect family.”

  “Faith—”

  “I know. But it felt that way to me.” She hears in her own voice something akin to awe. “From the first day I met you, I felt I’d been taken in, given safe harbor, a home. But it always felt temporary, no matter what you said, no matter how many times you said you loved me. At first I felt rescued, even whole—but as time went on, as I watched you with the family, with our sons, even with friends and neighbors, I came to understand how broken I was.”

  She falters now. Where is this torrent of words coming from? She is speaking of two people she hardly knows, people from long ago: one of them young and fearless, the other younger, and scared. Isn’t she someone else now? Isn’t he? Didn’t she herself offer safe harbor, however temporary, to Connie after the crash?

  Joe presses her fingers. “I’m still listening.”

  She keeps his hands. “When Chris was born I was terrified. I mean a real, physical terror, just like someone was chasing me with an ax. I was so sure I’d turn into Billy and Delle now that I had a baby. I wanted that baby, both babies, and I knew there would be nothing temporary about it. I’d have these sons all my life, yet I didn’t have one thing of my own to give them, not one tradition, not one hunch or intuition I could trust.” She is talking about her children but it’s Connie who materializes in her mind, a two-year-old with grimy feet, tott
ering through the Connecticut house in a wet diaper.

  “You carried them around for months, Faith. They never cried. You were a beautiful mother. You are.”

  “I was watching you the whole time, how you did it. How your instincts worked.” Felled by these memories, she draws her hands away, hiding her face. “I had no instincts,” she says, her voice wavering. “Joe, I was so lonely.”

  She hears the scrape of his chair, his step, the rustle of his shirt when he reaches for her. She rises, presses herself to him and runs her fingers through the gray part of his hair, along the creases near his eyes, as if she were blind.

  His voice drifts out of the silence. “Instinct is all you had,” he says. “It’s what I loved most about you. You knew when it was going to rain. You were up ten minutes before Ben woke with a nightmare.” The hall clock sounds behind them, a lonesome tolling. “Listen to me, Faith. You don’t escape from a family like mine without a written prescription for how your life is going to go. If Plan A doesn’t work—say your brother gets killed in Vietnam—then Plan B kicks in. And then there’s a Plan C, and D, and forever.”

  She smiles, remembering. “Always another rabbit in the hat.”

  “That’s right,” he says. “It doesn’t leave much room for following your nose.” He stands away, still touching her, his hands cupped over her shoulders. “Faith, everything I am was given to me. But you were different, you had to make it up as you went along.” His fingers tighten on her. “Can’t you see why you fascinated me? Why you still do? I was supposed to marry somebody like Maggie or Sarah or Amy. A woman like you was definitely not in the plan.”

  “I didn’t exactly fit.” She’s thinking of her first time at his house, the barrage of questions.

  “No,” he says, moving to hold her again. “You were a good thing. It was my mistake, trying to make you fit.” It seems to Faith a long, long time since he has looked so calm, so willing to understand her. He bends his head, holding her, his voice low in her ear. “Faith, you’re the only mystery in my life. Listen. This is instinct talking. I need you. I do.”

  When she kisses him it feels exactly like old times, the oldest times, before their babies, before their wedding, when Joseph Fuller Junior had startled her out of the coma that had been her growing up. She had been moved by him once, had given in to love with imaginary angels smiling over her bed; she had given in and stayed happy as long as she could stand it. Happiness had been such terrible work; there was so much you had to pay attention to. It seems to her now, moving up the stairs of the only place she has ever called home, that she needn’t have tried so hard. Can she not, after all these years, understand how his world works, his capacity for care, his belief in love?

  At the door of her room, their old room, Joe stops, bringing his arms around her. The years are falling from her like feathers, her lips touching the weary lines of Joseph Fuller Junior’s face.

  She wishes she could have it back now, their first time, knowing what would come later. Good things: two sons, well-lighted holidays, a home of their own. He crushes her against his chest and her breath comes out as a cry.

  “Did I hurt you?” His hair is sticking up like Ben’s.

  “No.” She hugs him. “No.”

  Their bed is still covered by the quilt she once tore from it. Joe sits on it, pulling her down next to him. He unbuttons her shirt and slips it from her shoulders.

  “Joe,” she says, suddenly shy.

  He runs his hands over her skin. “I love you.”

  She crosses her arms, gathering her shirt at her chest.

  “Faith?”

  She gets up and wanders to the other side of the bed, a safe distance away. “This isn’t just for now, is it?” she says. “It’s not just tonight? Joe, I don’t think I can turn back from here.”

  His eyes are locked on her as if she might disappear. “I know I can’t,” he whispers. She can see that he loves her, she has always seen it; she has only to believe it.

  “What I mean is,” she says, “I’m still me.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  She closes her eyes, not believing how she feels. There is nothing now but this room, this bed, this sweet man.

  “Joe,” she says. “Can you hear my heart?”

  He tears back the quilt, his eyes bright with desire. “I hear it.” The way he is looking at her makes her feel beautiful.

  They stare at each other from opposite sides of the bed as the haze of years between them dissolves into this one clear moment. Everything stops. She waits, looking at him through layers of hope and memory, until, after a lifetime of standing still, she is the first one to move.

  THREE

  If divorce is the second stage of marriage, peace is the third. The days go by much as they always have, except that Joe is at the table every evening now and next to her in bed at night. She feels, God help her, like one of the peonies at the back of the yard, a big, ragged, hollering bloom. A simple living thing.

  Through the kitchen window she watches Joe working alone on the Corvair that Chris has inexplicably left idle since winter. His stomach, once flat, softens at the middle, a tender ridge over his belt. It pleases her to see these gentle ravages of time. They have a history.

  “Looks like slow going,” she says to Chris, who sits at the table, sullen, turned away from the window. He still has his name tag, CHRIS, PRODUCE DEPT, pinned to his shirt. He looks pale and sleepless, and the green shadow of wet vegetables shows on his palms. “You could go out there and help him.”

  “Nah.” He shrugs. “It was never really my car.” He glances out the window. “He can have it.”

  “Bad day?” she asks him.

  Chris shakes his head, rubbing the stains on his hands. Lately everything she says to him must be measured first by the teaspoon. It always amazed her that, through the transmutations of adolescence, he still liked her. Now she’s not so sure.

  “You’ve picked a fine time to turn into me,” she says cheerfully, but he chooses not to hear her. Joe’s coming back must surely please Chris (Ben, for his part, literally jumped for joy) but he seems bent on making them guess. His silence is eerie, and maddening. In the balance that has always marked this household, they might be exchanging skins.

  Outside she hears the clink-clink of Joe pawing through his socket set. She can see only the top of his head now, over the murky engine hold of the Corvair. Her eyes drift once again to Chris, who startles her by staring straight at her, his eyes just a faint wash of green in this light.

  “Mom,” he says. He takes a breath. “Tracy’s pregnant.”

  Her mouth opens. “Oh my God.”

  “We’re getting married.”

  A blizzard of ruined images falls before her. “Chris. Oh—” The table top seems to be turning under her hands; the floor shifts viciously. “Chris, you just turned eighteen.”

  He won’t look at her. “Her mother said we can live in one of their apartments for a while. Rent free, while we get on our feet.” Numb, Faith listens. “I figure I can work during the day and go to school at night.”

  “Chris. Honey, there must be some other—”

  “No,” he says. “No abortion. No adoption. This is my baby we’re talking about, Mom.”

  She freezes, stunned into silence, as if caught in headlights. His eyes shine back at her, sincere and resolute. Helpless, she watches the baby who once frightened her witless make his final transformation into a man. “How long—”

  “She’s due in November.”

  “November.” She tries to make the word mean something. This is June, his high school graduation days away. “How long have you known?”

  “A while.” He grimaces. “I didn’t have the guts to tell you.”

  A grandchild.

  She stands at the sink, drinking a glass of water. How did she get here? She finds her son standing near her and gathers him, big and loose-limbed, into her arms.

  “Mom.” She hears the gritted teeth. “I’m scare
d.” She knows exactly how his life must look to him, a vast cavern with nothing in it but things he doesn’t know. His big hands grip her around the waist and she thinks of those hands on a basketball, the graceful arc on release.

  “You know a lot more than you think you do, Chris,” she tells him. She pets his soft hair. “Believe it.” He drapes his arms across the back of her shoulders. He is tall, but it’s clear this time who is doing the holding. “When you were a baby I was scared to death,” she tells him. “I thought the whole world knew a big secret.” She presses on his back. “But there’s no secret, honey. It’s just one foot in front of the other, that’s all it is.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he whispers. His need is a palpable thing.

  By the time Joe comes in, wiping his hands on a rag, Chris is deep in his room and Faith has grown accustomed to the thought of a grandchild, even as she grieves for her son’s lost chances. She imagines a little girl with her grandfather’s black hair.

  “Chris needs you,” is all she says, and Joe disappears up the stairs.

  She decides to give them time. She gazes out at the convalescing Corvair, its body repaired, parts of the engine still broken. The phone rings.

  “Broadway, Broadway, here I come!”

  Faith puts her fingers to her forehead. “Isadora, this isn’t a good time.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? Faith! August twenty-fifth at the Palace Theater. We did it!”

  “That’s great, Isadora. Congratulations.”

  “Will you come to the opening?”

  “I—”

  “August twenty-fifth, are you free?”

  “Isadora, this isn’t the best—”