Secrecy

by Belva Plain

  He hesitated. Bill had the impression that he was trying to make up his mind whether he should say something more or not. Then, leaning across the table, he lowered his voice almost to a whisper.

  “That boy of hers is no one hundred percent pleasure, you know. I could lose plenty of sleep over him if I let myself. The fact is, Bill, and I’m ashamed to say it about my wife’s fatherless son, but I don’t like him. I had every intention of being a companion, a father, to him, but it’s not working out all that well. He never looks me in the eye. Oh, he’s perfectly polite and all that—Claudia’s brought him up that way—but I have a strange feeling that he’s taking stock of me, assessing my strength, my intelligence, or what? My financial worth, perhaps? As the kids say, it’s weird.”

  The situation had gone suddenly into reverse. Cliff, who had begun by counseling Bill, now wore an anxious, puzzled frown, as if he were hoping for enlightenment from Bill.

  “Lately I’ve had queer fleeting thoughts. Do you know I’ve caught him listening in unexpected places? I hate to say it, but I’ve even thought I wouldn’t put it past him to listen outside our bedroom door.”

  “Good God! Have you told Claudia?”

  “No, no, no! I can’t hurt her like that. Anyway, she’d see it too differently. She believes in tolerance. You have to understand the adolescent’s reaching toward independence, she says.”

  Cliff pondered for a minute or two while Bill, uncertain what to say, waited. And then Cliff’s face turned sunny again. “You know, maybe she’s right. After all, Ted does do well in school, he has many friends, and makes no trouble at home. So I’m probably exaggerating what I think I see. And you’re probably doing the same with Charlotte.”

  Having relieved himself by his confession, he was back precisely where he had started, cheerfully confident about the business of parenthood and obviously unaware that he had been moving in a circle.

  The foolishness of this irked Bill, so that he spoke a trifle sternly. “We’re talking about two entirely different things.” He stopped. He, too, was moving in a circle. What was the use of half an admission?

  “It’s a strange year,” he said then. “You find a wife and I lose one.”

  “What do you mean? Because Elena’s taking a vacation? She’s flighty, that’s all.” Cliff’s smile was kind. “You ought to be used to her. Now that the weather’s warming, she’ll be back.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bill said. “Not this time.”

  For a long week now, while Dad was away—a hundred-year-long week, it seemed—Charlotte had known what news he would bring back.

  “Since your mother really wants to leave, it will be better for her,” Dad had said.

  His forehead had been wrinkled, and he had put his hand over hers. She had understood the meaning of the hand. It was to tell her not to be afraid, that the world was going to hold steady.

  For a minute it had seemed as if the world had gone whirling, like a balloon taken by the wind beyond reach. And yet, had she not really expected this? And she saw again the red-and-blue-striped sweater, the gold chains on the sofa, in the early morning light.

  Even now, alone in the room with her homework still unfinished on her desk, she was undecided over whether she ought to tell Dad about that morning or not. It was so ugly. It was so sad. Still, in the long run, it did not really matter; it was only a detail in the story that was coming to an end.

  Dad, passing in the hall, looked and paused. “Are you working? Will I disturb you?”

  “Come in. I’m not doing much.”

  “I know you aren’t. But, honey, you can’t let this derail you.”

  “I think I failed the math test today.”

  “You’ll make it up. Charlotte, you have to. This is your life, not your mother’s or mine.”

  “That’s not quite true,” she said, reproaching him.

  “Of course it’s not altogether true, but mostly it is.” He sat on the edge of the bed and continued. “I see you had a letter from Mama in the mail.”

  “Yes. Do you want to read it?”

  “No, it’s your letter.”

  “It’s very sad.”

  “Of course it is.”

  On the telephone, too, Elena had cried. But she had no right to cry. It was her fault.

  “Was it because of that man Judd?” Charlotte blurted now.

  Dad shook his head. He felt bad, but because he was a man, he probably thought he shouldn’t show it that much.

  “I’m keeping you from your work,” he said, standing up.

  “I don’t feel like doing any. She says I should come back to Florida when school’s over in June. And I don’t want to go. Do I have to?”

  “I can’t answer now. All these things need to be ironed out.”

  “She said she might like to live in Italy again. Would I have to go there too?” Panic ran through Charlotte like a shaking chill.

  “Oh, honey, if that happens … If you don’t want to go, I’ll fight it. Besides, I think … I can’t promise, but I think anybody who, I mean, the people who decide these things will know that you’re fourteen, old enough to know and say what you want.”

  When he moved toward the door, she saw his pain. He wanted to get out of the room. And the sight of her father’s pain, of his love for her and the enormity of what was happening, was suddenly too hard to control. As soon as the door closed behind him, she put her head down on the desk and cried.

  She hated Elena. Hated her! And yet, the only reason that she was unable to cry to Emmabrown, when she needed so badly to cry to someone and had always gone to her with her troubles, was that Emmabrown would surely say nasty things about Elena.

  Then she sat up. Other people’s parents separated. Other people didn’t fall apart over it, so why should Charlotte Dawes? She would stiffen her back and her resolve.

  Yet the floor of the room, the very ground beneath the house, had caved in, and she was falling.

  Claudia told herself that she would like to do something for “that child.” It was a pity to see her caught as she was in anxious suspense, while all these protracted decisions were being made and unmade. The sins that parents perpetrate upon their children! It was certainly, in this case at least, without intent, especially on Bill’s part. Charlotte meant the world to him; Claudia had observed that the very first time they had met. Cliff said Bill should have had a big family, but there had been none after Charlotte. She wondered whether that had been Elena’s decision. Claudia was not a person to sit in judgment of others—she had seen enough of the way life can toss people around to cast much blame—but the truth was that Elena had not made a particularly good impression on her. The first impression had resulted from a contemptuous remark of hers, disparaging another woman for being “the type who baked cookies.” Of course, it was fashionable in some circles nowadays to talk that way, Claudia thought. The dickens with them. Claudia enjoyed baking cookies.

  So she drove over one rainy Saturday and invited Charlotte to come to lunch.

  “Thank you, but I have homework to do,” Charlotte said.

  Bill gave Claudia a glance whose meaning was clear, so she responded firmly, “You needn’t glue yourself to homework all day. Come for a while, and whenever you feel like going home, I’ll take you.”

  Claudia believed in the direct approach. So they had not yet arrived at her house, when she said, “You need to get this trouble out of your system, Charlotte. It’s not good to close things up inside. I know, I’ve been there. So my advice is: talk to somebody, preferably to a woman. There must be someone you believe in.” And when Charlotte did not reply, she suggested, “Emmabrown, perhaps? You’ve grown up with her.”

  “I would, except she doesn’t like my mother, and I don’t want to hear bad things about my mother.”

  There was a sorrowful dignity in the girl’s words, and Claudia felt a sudden lump in her throat.

  “Of course you don’t want to,” she said. “And anyway, there’s no sense now in
casting blame.”

  “No.”

  “Sometimes, you see, although people marry with the best intentions, it doesn’t work out. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple to end it. But that’s their problem, Charlotte. And there’s nothing anyone else can do about it.”

  “I know.”

  The tone was resigned. Claudia glanced at the girl’s head, which was turned away into a three-quarter profile, a position almost demure, as in an old engraving. She would be beautiful someday, not in any popular or fashionable sense, but profoundly so, with Bill’s strong features tempered toward the feminine.

  I must not urge her, Claudia thought suddenly, changing her mind. She has probably heard enough pep talks. Let her rest.

  “How about doing some baking together?” she asked briskly. Keep it natural, not too emotional. “I’m a very good baker, even if I do say so myself. I thought I’d do lemon tarts today. They’re Ted’s favorites, and Cliff likes them too. We’ll make enough for you to take some home.”

  I’ve never had a companion in the kitchen, she thought sometime later, while Charlotte was beating egg whites. That’s the joy in having a girl. Of course, Ted is a joy in his own way. But boys grow away from you so fast. On weekends I hardly ever see him. And boys never tell you where they’re going, or what they’re doing.

  Already after these few hours Charlotte had begun to relax and confide.

  “I think I’d like to talk to you,” she said shyly.

  “Would you? I’m glad.”

  “Sometimes I feel guilty because I feel closer to Dad. It’s not that Mama was ever anything but good to me. She’s always thinking about me or buying presents. She has lots of money, you see.”

  The naïveté of this remark was touching. “Lots of money,” the magic salve, the solvent and excuse. Cliff said Elena mothered in fits and starts, between indifference and doting, between pampering and neglect.

  “But it’s Mama who wants to—to go away. It’s Mama who has done—do you know about it? I hope you do, because then I won’t have to say it.”

  “You don’t have to say it.”

  “Dad said she wants me to live with her and go to school in Florida and come back here for vacations. I don’t want to, Claudia—Aunt Claudia.”

  “That’s all right. Call me just Claudia. It makes me feel young.”

  Oh, this nice, nice child! And the mother, running around like a damned fool with God knows whom! No wonder Bill was almost ill from smothering his rage.

  “I wish they’d make up their minds. Dad says I can tell the judge, if it should come to court, where I want to live. But he can’t promise that I’ll get what I want. Do you think that’s fair, Claudia?”

  “No, I don’t.” She felt the words snap out of her mouth. Fair! The whole thing was outrageous, a heap of coals dumped on this guiltless young head. And with sudden tenderness she said, “How about some lunch? You can mix the salad, and I’ll make a cheese omelette.”

  She had made some changes in the house: new curtains in the downstairs rooms and an entire wall of books in the living room. It was pleasant after lunch to display these changes.

  “I love your curtains,” Charlotte said. “They’re Irish lace, aren’t they?” And perhaps because Claudia had looked surprised, she added, “Mama knows about things like that, and I guess I learned a little from her.”

  “Your mother has beautiful taste,” Claudia said, satisfied to have something good to say about Elena.

  “And all these books. Oh, David Copperfield, my favorite. I thought we had a big collection, mostly Dad’s, but you have ten times as many.”

  “Well, not quite. I owned a bookstore, you see, and I made sure to take a pile of books with me when I sold it.”

  Charlotte went around the room examining coffee-table art books, a landscape of the Maine coast, a small marble cat, and finally a collection of photographs.

  “My parents,” Claudia said, identifying one after the other. “My college class, my sister, and, of course, there’s Ted.”

  “He’s handsome, Claudia.”

  Claudia was used to hearing that. How the girls ran after him! Even their mothers sometimes told her about them. But there was a good deal more to Ted than his looks. And hearing herself prattle like any fatuous mother, yet unable to stop, she said, “Ted’s not merely a handsome football hero, Charlotte. He may not be the best student in most things, but when it comes to math, he’s almost a whiz. I don’t know yet what he’ll do with it, but something remarkable, I’m sure. Cliff thinks so too.”

  There was no doubt that Ted was going to amount to something. Yes, he could be a bit headstrong sometimes, like a colt or any other young male creature, but what did you expect? He was a young male creature.

  And Claudia, feeling an inward smile as any mother would, hoped that her son might get through life with as few obstacles as possible in his way. A good, intelligent, and kindly wife, she wished for him, as mentally she raced into the future. Someone, perhaps, like this young Charlotte, who was now surveying the books again.

  “This is so interesting,” Charlotte said, taking a book from a shelf. “I was thinking, in fact I have thought, I might like to be an architect. I love to look at houses. But then, I’m sure you have to know a lot of math, and it’s not my best subject. I’m not like Ted.”

  “If that’s what you really want, you’ll master the math. It might be hard, but nothing worth fighting for is easy,” Claudia said stoutly. “You want to borrow the book, don’t you?”

  Charlotte nodded and smiled. It was her first wholehearted smile of the day. “You make me feel cheerful, Claudia,” she said.

  They had progressed. And Claudia felt as if she had won the first round in a tournament.

  FIVE

  One Saturday morning Charlotte decided to take the long walk over to Claudia’s house.

  A month had passed since the day of the lemon tarts, and she had been there several times since. It pleased her to know that Claudia wanted her company.

  “Because she has no daughter,” said Emmabrown, who, Charlotte guessed, would have liked to add, though she did not, “and because you have no mother.”

  Rob and Roy came rushing and barking to the door, which was opened by Ted. Startled and absurdly flustered, Charlotte bent to stroke the dogs.

  “They know you,” said Ted.

  “Yes, I’ve been visiting your mother.” Still flustered, she displayed a book. “I’ve come to return this. Is she here?”

  “No, they’ve gone to Boston for a couple of days.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just leave this for her.”

  “Why don’t you come in, anyway?”

  He stood surveying her as if he had never seen her before. Actually, he had not seen her very often. She had put on the pink skirt and top that had come in Elena’s latest package from Florida. For no reason at all she had simply felt like dressing up. And now she was glad she had.

  “Come on in,” he repeated. “I’m just having a sandwich. Want one?”

  The fact was that Charlotte had taken lunch for granted, as Claudia expected her to do.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” she said.

  “Make a sandwich for yourself. There’s bread and there’s sliced turkey. Coleslaw, potato salad. My mother left enough for an army.”

  He had a rough way of talking, sort of slapdash and careless, that was interesting. And she thought how ridiculous it was to have no brother, to go to a school for girls, and not even know how to talk to a boy or what to expect from him.

  He wasn’t a boy, though. He stood ten inches above her. He was a senior, old enough to vote or be in the army. No doubt, barging in like this, she was being a nuisance to him.

  She made a sandwich and sat down at the kitchen table, wondering how to begin a conversation, since he had not begun one.

  “Have a beer,” he said, shoving a glass and another bottle across the table.

  “I’ve never had beer,” she said.

  “Well, t
here’s always a first time. Here, I’ll open it for you.”

  She sipped and shuddered. It was awful, sour enough to make you want to spit it out.

  Ted was amused. “Takes getting used to, like olives.”

  “Oh, I like olives.”

  “Good, I’ll get some. And a Coke.”

  When he had set these out, there came a silence, made deeper by the small clicks and clinks of plates and forks. The dogs scratched and thumped. Ted’s chair squeaked when he tipped back on it. Elena would say he was hard on furniture, Charlotte thought. But he was so big. He was powerful and manly. That was the word: manly, and much handsomer than some of the men on television or in the movies. He made her self-conscious. It was stupid for two people to sit there chewing and not saying anything.

  “You’re a cute kid,” Ted said abruptly. “In another couple of years you’ll be really cute. You’ve got a nice shape.”

  When your breasts are bigger, he meant. They were already big enough for him to notice. And she felt confusion, not knowing how to respond to the compliment.

  “So, Charlotte, tell me about yourself.”

  What was there to say? There was nothing.

  “There isn’t much to tell,” she said.

  Elena would say: You have to sparkle, be alive, be interesting. You can’t just sit there!

  “There must be. Anyway, I already know a few things about you. C.D. talks about you a lot.”

  “C.D.?”

  “Your uncle.”

  “Why do you call him C.D.?”

  “Clifford Dawes, of course. I don’t like the sound of uncle because he isn’t my uncle. And he’s surely not my father. So you see …” Ted shrugged.

  She thought he looked somber. A thrill of sympathy, first hot, then cold, seemed to shoot through her veins. His father was dead, while her mother was—

  “C.D. says you’re very smart and you’re an expert swimmer. True?”

  “I don’t know that I’m so smart, but I am a pretty good swimmer.”

  “That’s great. Maybe you and I can go out to the lake this summer. I’ll bet you look great in a swimsuit.”

  She was astonished. If she were to tell anyone at school that Ted Marple—Ted Marple!—had invited her to go to the lake, they might not even believe it. She would certainly tell them, though, and no later than next Monday. Tell them all, too, not only her friends, but even snobs like Addie Thompson, who thought she was God’s gift to boys. With this thought enlivening her the words began to flow.