Family Secrets

by Judith Henry Wall

  Scott used to make jokes at social gatherings about his obsessive-compulsive wife. He especially loved describing how she used Q-tips to get rid of the grunge around the faucet in the kitchen sink. That had been when they still lived in the city and hung out with their Penn State friends who’d landed jobs in New York or were going to grad school at NYU or Columbia. Now they seldom went to social gatherings, but they still had grunge around the kitchen faucet. Mostly she ignored it, reminding herself that Scott was now in charge of the kitchen.

  Vanessa glanced at the clock. She needed to sleep to be at her best tomorrow when she talked to Miss Clara Proctor, president of the class of 1958 and author of the column Fin, Feathers, and Fur, one of the longest-running syndicated newspaper columns in the country. The college wanted to honor Miss Proctor by naming the proposed reflecting pool in front of the library after her, provided, of course, that she make a sizable donation to the project. Such pitches were delicate. People were offended when she asked for too much or not enough. Or because she’d asked someone else first. Or they hadn’t received sufficent recognition for their last gift.

  Vanessa thought almost daily about finding some other line of work, but she was vested in the college’s pension plan and her daughters could attend there tuition-free. Of course, Beth and Lily would probably want to attend some other college—one with boys on campus. And with that thought, she forced her mind to call a halt to the tumbling avalanche of thoughts and concentrated on falling asleep.

  At JoJo’s, Ellie danced on her own through several numbers and was beginning to think she’d been stood up. She debated whether she should just leave or try to find a seat at the bar when suddenly there was a man behind her, his hands on her waist, his mouth close to her ear. “You must be Ellie,” he said.

  Ellie had a smile in place before she turned around.

  He was older than she had expected and a bit thick about the middle but otherwise attractive. Tall. A good head of hair. Clean-shaven. Nice jawline.

  Boone picked up the beat of the music and began to dance. Ellie would have preferred having a couple of drinks and getting acquainted, but Boone obviously loved to dance and moved well for a guy his size. Ellie reconnected with the music for a time, but tiredness began to get the best of her. It had been a stressful day. A cover story for the November edition for which she’d hired one of the top fashion writers in the city was poorly written, inaccurate, and unusable. And Mother’s birthday celebration had turned into a major disappointment. Ellie had been so excited about the portrait. Vanessa and Georgiana, too. God, what a downer Mother’s reaction had been. And then she up and announces that she’s leaving the country. Which caught them all by surprise and sure raised Vanessa’s ire. Ellie didn’t want her to move away any more than Vanessa did, but it wasn’t as if their mother were elderly and demented. She could do whatever she wanted to do, and there wasn’t anything her daughters could do to stop her. Then there had been that business with the letter in the Bible, which was just too weird. And even if the woman who wrote the letter was still alive, finding her would be next to impossible.

  With her smile as vivacious as she could manage, Ellie nodded in the direction of the bar. “I need a drink,” she mouthed over the music.

  She wondered just how old Boone was and if he was successful at whatever he did and why he and his wife were getting a divorce and if he had kids, when not so long ago her first wonderings about a man would have to do with how he was between the sheets.

  Four

  THERE’S iced tea and sandwich fixings in the kitchen,” Penelope announced when Vanessa arrived.

  Ellie and Georgiana had already arrived and were inspecting the contents of the refrigerator. Vanessa hadn’t seen or talked to her sisters since the birthday gathering last month. Penelope had summoned her daughters to the apartment to decide which things they wanted. The items they selected were to be removed from the premises before the end of the month, when the remaining contents would be turned over to an auction house.

  Penelope stuck her head in the kitchen to announce that she had errands to run and they should take all the time they needed. “Should there be any arguments over who gets what, I suggest you draw cards,” Penelope said over her shoulder. “There’s a deck of playing cards in the top right-hand drawer of the secretary.”

  With their mother gone, the only sound in the small kitchen was the drip of the faucet. Vanessa made a turkey sandwich but realized she had no appetite and took only a few bites. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out an opened bottle of Chablis. “I don’t know about you guys, but I need something alcoholic before we undertake this task.”

  They downed the wine and found an unopened bottle in the pantry. Wineglasses in hand, they wandered around aimlessly, discussing memories they associated with various items. So much stuff. Stacks of framed diplomas and honor-roll certificates. Boxes of photograph albums and scrapbooks. A box of old phonograph records. Boxes of dishes and of pots and pans. Boxes of sheets and towels. Not to mention all that furniture, some of it dating back to their grandparents’ tenure in the apartment. And the books. Hundreds of books.

  “It makes me angry that she’s making us do this,” Vanessa said, picking up a chipped bookend on which a bronzed baby shoe had been mounted. Her own, she thought. But maybe not.

  “Come on, Vanessa,” Ellie said. “It’s something we would have had to do eventually. We’re just doing it sooner rather than later.”

  “What a morbid thing to say!” Georgiana chastised.

  They selected mostly small things—family pictures, vases, lamps, objets d’art—and argued frequently.

  No one claimed the silver-anniversary portrait of their parents. Georgiana took it just so it would have a home.

  After Penelope had turned over the apartment to the painters and carpet layers, she stayed with Vanessa for two weeks, spoiling her granddaughters, making frequent trips into the city to wind down her affairs and be wined and dined by various friends wanting to wish her bon voyage and bon chance.

  “And just what do your friends think about this abrupt change in your life?” Vanessa wanted to know.

  “Some of them think I’m crazy,” Penelope said with a shrug. “Others are green with envy.”

  The night before her departure, Penelope rented a suite at the St. Regis and had a slumber party for her daughters and granddaughters. She treated them to dinner at the Four Seasons, during which, at Penelope’s insistence, Beth and Lily had their first sip of champagne.

  “I really think that this Jean Claude person should have come to fetch you and meet your family,” Ellie said. “How do we know you haven’t made him up?”

  “You don’t,” Penelope said, offering Ellie a radiant smile. “Maybe I’m really going to enter a convent and spend the rest of my life scrubbing and praying.”

  Vanessa had never seen her mother look happier, which seemed so unfair. Her father was dead, and her mother was blushing like a bride.

  The next day, they all piled in Vanessa’s SUV for the drive to the airport. After the hugs and kisses and tears, they watched as Penelope headed toward security. “Be happy,” Ellie called after her.

  “Call as soon as you get there,” Georgiana added.

  Vanessa just waved.

  Ellie and Georgiana took a bus back into the city. The drive home for Vanessa and her daughters was quiet. Even Beth and Lily seemed to realize that they were all going to have to renegotiate who they all were to each other with their grandmother gone. Penelope had always been the head of the family, Vanessa realized. Always. Even when Daddy was alive.

  The revelation was a bit startling. Had her father liked it that way? Or had there been a river of resentment running just beneath his calm demeanor? The way Scott resented her.

  She dropped Beth and Lily off at volleyball practice, then drove on home. Scott was mowing the lawn. His shirt was off, his body glistening with sweat. He was getting a paunch, Vanessa realized.

  On weekends
, she was supposed to cook the evening meals and had planned to do something quick for their dinner—omelets maybe or scrounge around for leftovers. But when the girls were invited to have dinner and spend the night with a friend, she decided on salmon and scalloped potatoes instead. And set the table in the dining room complete with candles and wineglasses.

  Scott paused on his way upstairs to shower, a puzzled look on his face. “Is it our anniversary or something?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling with concern.

  “No, I’m just feeling a bit melancholy and decided that a nice evening with my husband would be the best cure.”

  “You know that the Yankees game starts at seven?” he queried a bit fearfully.

  She could ask him to record the game and watch it after dinner. But what Vanessa really had in mind was the two of them lingering over dinner, then ending up in bed. She could, of course, insist, but that would cast a pall over the proceedings.

  Dinner was served on the coffee table in the family room. She watched part of the game with him, then went upstairs to bed. Probably, Vanessa rationalized, she was too exhausted from the emotion of the day to enjoy sex.

  When Scott came up to bed, she was still awake though. He tiptoed across the darkened room to the bathroom. She listened while he brushed his teeth and used the toilet. He got in bed gingerly in an obvious effort not to disturb her. “I’m not asleep,” she said.

  “You’re feeling blue about your mother leaving, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Vanessa was startled by the tears that immediately came to her eyes. A sob erupted from her chest. Vanessa couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried, but she was about to cry now.

  “Ah, baby, don’t be sad,” he said, taking her in his arms and stroking her back. It had been a long time since Vanessa had experienced tenderness. It made her cry all the harder. Then suddenly she was reaching for him with a need so deep it startled her.

  Ellie had hoped Boone would spend the night, but he got up after sex, pulled on his clothes, kissed her forehead, and left, claiming he had an early-morning flight. Last time his excuse was an early-morning meeting. And the time before that. More and more, he just wanted to “drop by for a drink.” No dinner. No movie. No evening stroll.

  Ellie eventually realized that Boone had gone back to his wife. He never answered his cell phone in the evening, and she had gone from seeing him three or four times a week to once or twice and only on weeknights, which meant he was telling his wife that he had to work late at the office or was having a dinner meeting with clients. The whole situation was pointless, but she could not bring herself to break it off. Which made her feel stupid and cheap. But obviously, Boone didn’t love his wife if he was screwing around on her. So why did he go back to her? Cynthia was her name. His children’s names were Terrence and Beverly.

  Maybe his wife was rich. Or maybe she was such a nice person and such a good mother to his children that Boone could not bring himself to divorce her. On that depressing thought, Ellie promised herself that she was absolutely not going to answer her phone the next time he called.

  Tomorrow she would check the sperm bank listings in the yellow pages.

  But did she really want to do that—have a baby on her own?

  Ellie wasn’t sure. She wanted the whole package—husband, kids, a house in the suburbs—but maybe a fatherless kid was better than no kid at all.

  She clutched her middle and curled around her empty uterus. She was at midcycle. Tonight would have been a good night to get pregnant. How many more good nights to get pregnant did she have left before menopause set in?

  She did the arithmetic in her head. Some women went through menopause in their late thirties or early forties. She could have fewer than one hundred nights left when a man could make her pregnant.

  Maybe she should just go off the pill and let nature take its course—with Boone or some other man. If she did that, she’d never tell the man. It would be her baby alone.

  She thought of the hundred or so ova lined up down there waiting for their chance to amount to something. She prayed that at least one of them would be successful.

  Freddy was on the road with Trisha Bell’s comeback tour and back in town just for the night. Georgiana insisted that he had to wear a coat and tie and take her to a classy restaurant where they could linger over dinner and wine. And, no, they could not go to some nightclub to listen to this or that band afterward. She wanted his undivided attention for the entire evening. After dinner, they would go to her apartment and light candles and make beautiful love. It was the seventh anniversary of their first date, and Georgiana planned to make an occasion out of it.

  She had spent the afternoon hanging up the dozens of garments scattered about her small residence and making her cluttered apartment presentable. Then she put out candles. Lots of candles.

  Freddy’s apartment was uncluttered. Other than musical and acoustical equipment, he was a man of few possessions. She and Freddy had tried living together but come to realize that to do that successfully they would need a larger residence in which there were three domains—his space, her space, and a common area that was the responsibility of a third party to clean.

  They met for before-dinner cocktails at a bar in the Village. Georgiana’s heart melted as Freddy weaved his way across the room. He was almost on time and was wearing a navy blazer left over from high school Glee Club days with the school emblem still sewed to the pocket and a pair of brand-new jeans. He was carrying a teddy bear equipped with a backpack and wearing a HAPPY ANNIVERSARY banner across his chest.

  “You look adorable,” she said as they embraced.

  “Adorable? I was trying for suave and sophisticated.”

  “That, too.”

  He took in the plunging neckline of her dress. “And you look like a woman in need of ravishment. You sure we have to eat dinner first?”

  “I’m sure,” she said, then she nibbled his ear.

  She sat down and cuddled the bear in her lap while she opened its backpack. Inside was a gold charm bracelet. “Oh my gosh, Freddy, this must have cost a fortune.”

  “I had to get gold for my golden girl.”

  Georgiana scooted close to him on the banquette and examined the charms. There was a treble clef for his music, a camera for her talent, the Statue of Liberty for their city, and a heart for their love. Georgiana got tears in her eyes.

  Freddy possessed the one quality in a man that she found the most appealing.

  He was sweet.

  Her sisters had made it obvious over the years that they wondered why in the world she hung in there with Freddy. And maybe, Georgiana realized, at some point in the future her biological clock would kick in, as Ellie’s now had, and she would have to find some responsible man with a 401(k) and health insurance to plant the seed of motherhood in her womb. And unless this stalwart man was willing to cook, clean, launder, and carpool while she strived to become a photographer of artistic renown, she would have to stop being a slob and turn into a responsible, tidy, efficient lady. She would have to become her sister Vanessa, who was uptight, frazzled, and no longer in love with the man she had married, although she would never admit that to anyone, including herself.

  Georgiana had a hard enough time imagining a messy, self-indulgent person such as herself ever being a mother, but Freddy the musician as a father was beyond comprehension.

  By the time Georgiana was unlocking the door to her apartment, she and Freddy were tugging at each other’s clothes. They staggered across the room leaving garments and shoes in their wake.

  Five

  VANESSA drove slowly down Main Street, surprised at how much of the sleepy little West Virginia town looked familiar even though the last time she’d visited Pikesville she’d been only six years old. The trees that lined the street were considerably larger, but the drugstore where she drank cherry phosphates sitting on a high barstool was still there. Old men still lingered on benches in front of stores.

  On the outskirts of
town she turned west onto the Clarksburg highway. Then all she had to do was drive. Vera’s farm was the last property on the right before the river bridge.

  Vanessa knew that some of Vera’s land had been sold to pay for her father’s college education and that he had inherited and then sold the remainder of the farm. But Vanessa had always assumed the house was still there. She’d planned to knock on the door and explain that her father had grown up there and ask if she could walk around the property and hoped the present owners would even invite her inside the clapboard farmhouse.

  But the land where the farm was supposed to be was occupied by a sprawling truck stop.

  She drove around the perimeter, passing rows of parked rigs, looking for some sort of landmark—a section of fence, a familiar tree, building foundations. But there was no sign that generations of Wentworths had once lived on this land.

  Vanessa wondered if her father would have sold the farm on which he had been raised if he’d known it was to be razed. Maybe he felt less attached to it because he believed himself to be an orphan and his forebears had lived someplace else. Except, if the letter from Vera’s Bible was what it seemed, her father had Wentworth blood in his veins—unless the word aunt was an honorary designation. But it seemed more likely that a woman in her fifties would accept responsibility for raising a child if she and the child shared family ties.

  Vera had apparently honored Hattie’s request that the child never know anything about her, a request that seemed terribly unfair to both Vera and the child. But maybe Hattie had good reason to make such a stipulation, and Vera adhered to it because it was in Matthew’s best interest.

  Vanessa had carefully gone through the box with Vera’s papers. According to her birth certificate, Vera had been born in Hancock County and her parents’ names were John Robert Wentworth and Mary Wilma Oliver Wentworth. The box also held Vera’s high school diploma, various certificates and ribbons awarded at the county fair for everything from a reserve champion sow to fruit preserves, death certificates for her parents, and a document showing that she had purchased a burial plot. A tin that had once held chocolate-covered cherries now held several loose photographs of nameless people in dated clothing. Also in the tin was a pink hair ribbon, a dance program in which a boy named William had signed every line, and a yellowed newspaper clipping dated August 12, 1918. It was an obituary for PFC William Joseph Washburn, age nineteen, who had been killed by enemy fire during the Second Battle of the Marne.