Secrecy

by Belva Plain

  Yes, that’s how it would be. A sudden calmness came over her. The bus rolled along the familiar road past farms, a church, and a gas station at an intersection. Kids were walking home from school. A woman on the seat ahead was carrying a squirming baby. A man had a basket of oranges on his knees. It was all ordinary.

  “I’m not afraid,” she whispered.

  The man with the oranges turned to stare at her, so it must have been a loud whisper. And panic struck back.

  In Arkville she got off at the bus station and walked down Main Street looking for a doctor’s office. There were shops, a department store, and banks with people hurrying in and out, a bustle of strangers among whom she now felt a fearful strangeness. As she was passing a medical office building, this fear overcame her. The building challenged her with its cold aloofness, and she was unable to open its door. It took all her strength to keep from running back to the bus station.

  “I must,” she said, so kept on walking. And, rounding a corner into a quiet side street, came upon a frame house with a doctor’s shingle: IMMEDIATE HEALTH CARE, WALK-IN FACILITY. Two tubs filled with begonias stood beside the door. They looked friendly.

  “I must,” she said again, and went in.

  The doctor was perhaps old, or perhaps young, somewhat like Dad. Setting her schoolbag on the chair beside her, she sat down and answered his questions in as general a fashion as she possibly could, telling him nothing about Ted or even giving him her own right name.

  “This pain I have,” she said, “was pretty bad yesterday. I’m thinking it might be appendicitis.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll have to examine you.”

  Well, she had come this far and would have to go on till the end. And she felt a kind of pride in her own control as she followed the nurse into the examining room. On the table with her eyes squeezed shut, she kept saying inwardly, I’m not here. This isn’t me. I’m not here, until it was over. She gave a specimen. She got dressed. Scared. Must not give way. Must not.

  “The doctor will see you in a little while,” said the nurse. “Would you like a cold drink while you wait?”

  It seemed to Charlotte as she accepted the drink that the woman had shown a special kindness of face and voice, an unusual kindness, as though she was actually interested in Charlotte, or as though she was curious about her. This was odd. Yet she was aware that lately she had often felt as if people were looking at her with an odd expression.

  After a while she was summoned to the doctor. He, too, from the other side of his desk, was looking at her with a marked expression on his face. She understood at once that he was going to say something important. When, very quietly, he began, “Betsy—” she knew what he was going to say.

  “Betsy, there are things that you haven’t told me. Perhaps you haven’t told anyone. But they can’t be hidden any longer. I think you know that. I think you must have suspected when you came here that you are pregnant.”

  She lowered her head, receiving the blow. So the charms she had said, all the superstitious promises to herself—If it isn’t true, I will never complain about anything for the rest of my life, I will get straight A’s, I will not stuff on sweets, I will give half my allowance to charity—had meant nothing. Stupid magic, they were, as she had known all along.

  “I won’t ask you any questions. It’s not my business to do that. But I must speak to your parents.”

  Proud of being able to withstand the blow, Charlotte looked up and spoke steadily. “I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather tell them myself.”

  He was studying her. “There are things to be discussed. How do I know you’ll tell them?”

  “I’ll tell them. I have to.”

  “You are very young. I don’t want you to do anything foolish to yourself.”

  What did he mean? A secret abortion? Suicide?

  “I won’t. I promise I won’t.”

  “But I don’t know you, Betsy.” He smiled. “Would you accept a promise from a stranger?”

  “No. But I can’t let a stranger tell me what to do either.”

  Things—the doctor’s pale face, the pattern on the curtains, the white glare of the lightbulb—went whirling. She had to get home, to her room and her bed.

  “Are you all right, Betsy?”

  “Yes, but I have to get home. I want to pay you.”

  “Never mind that. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Your time,” she said, conscious of dignity in the face of what he must see as her pitiful shame. “I took your time.”

  The doctor got up, opened the door for her, saying gently, “We won’t argue about it.” And as she still waited, stubborn in her intent, he said quickly, “Send me whatever you think it’s worth. Go. Get home as fast as you can. Take care of yourself, Betsy. Here, don’t forget your book bag.”

  She fled. Outdoors, the sun shot wavering stripes of light on all the moving metal in the streets. The late afternoon was coppery, the glare sickening, so that once she stumbled over a curb and was saved by an old man’s arm.

  “Watch yourself, girlie.”

  Out of the glare, on the bus, she turned cold. Cold sweat wet her palms and her forehead. That pain, that cramp, was gnawing at her stomach, or near her stomach. From all she had read and heard, the calm of which in the doctor’s office she had been proud was really the calm of shock. She had not yet absorbed the facts, the truth.

  The bus jolted back toward Kingsley, past the farms, the service station at the intersection and the vacant schoolyard, back toward home and the facts. Now, the truth.

  “Charlotte wasn’t on the bus,” Emmabrown announced when Bill came home.

  “She probably went to a friend’s house.”

  “She should have phoned, then.”

  Emmabrown, he reflected, is a mother. She worries too much, but she’s a mother.

  He answered easily. “Oh, well. Kids. There’s the phone. There she is now.”

  A man’s voice inquired for Mr. Dawes. “This is Dr. Welsh in Arkville. Do you have a daughter named Charlotte?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t be alarmed. There’s been no accident or anything, but I need to talk to you.”

  Bill’s hands were shaking. Nevertheless, there had been no accident.… He sat down.

  “She left my office a few minutes ago, said she was going home. She’d given me the wrong name, and when I heard her story, I suspected she had, so I asked my nurse to get the right name out of her schoolbag.”

  There came a long pause. Bill, waiting silently, urged: Say it, for God’s sake, say it.

  “This is pretty startling news to be telling a father about his young daughter, but I might as well get it over with. She’s pregnant, Mr. Dawes.”

  Charlotte? Charlotte?

  “Are you there, Mr. Dawes?”

  He was outside himself, observing and remembering in a lurid flash the day long years ago when they had come in to the family sitting at dinner to say that his sister had been in an accident; he saw the faces, his mother’s face with eyes stretched open, mouth open, not quite believing.

  And now he, not accepting yet understanding that he must, fumbled for words. “Is she all right, I mean, is she coming home, I mean—”

  “I think she’s all right. I didn’t get the impression that she was going to harm herself. Still”—there was a very faint doubt in the man’s voice—“still, she’s in a state of shock. She wouldn’t tell me anything. Said she’d tell her parents herself.”

  “My God! She never—she’s always at home—I don’t see how—”

  “It seems she’s between the first and second month.”

  Bill floundered. Who? When? How? In that all-girls’ school, they were so isolated, so supervised. Who, then? his brain insisted. That fellow Ted? God, no. Can’t be. Can’t.

  “But she also complained of some fairly severe pain that she thought might be appendicitis. It might be, but I rather think not. I rather think there’s another problem. She ought
to see a gynecologist right away, Mr. Dawes. Right away. I’m in family medicine, but I can recommend—”

  “No. I—her mother and I will have to talk—I appreciate—” The proper words weren’t coming, he couldn’t think. “Do I owe you anything?”

  The doctor’s voice was very gentle. “Not at all. I have two daughters, so I can imagine—well, there’s nothing much to say. Just that, well, Charlotte has what I’d call elegance. She’ll get through this. You will too.”

  “Thank you. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you.”

  He put the phone down and groaned. Get through it? How? Charlotte has elegance.…

  He was still sitting there, bowed, near to tears and as close to being beaten as in all his life he had ever been, when he heard Charlotte coming in at the kitchen door. He heard her rushing upstairs, quite obviously in avoidance of him. Let her go. Neither one of them was ready yet to talk.

  At least she had come home. Thank God. Thank God.

  Prone and rigid, she lay on the bed, afraid to reveal by the faintest rustle of movement that she was there. Eventually, though, her father would come looking for her. But for a while yet the room was a safe haven. If only she might shut herself away in it, just rest there, sleep there, even die in it.

  So he really had done this to her, the filthy creep, the rattlesnake. Her fists and her teeth alike were clenched. If she could get her hands on him, she would claw his eyes out.

  And I so stupid … She wept, covering the sound with the sheet. How to explain it? No one would understand or believe any explanation. You would have to have been there, to see with your own eyes how it had happened. How was she going to get through this? She supposed she would, but she had no idea how.

  The bed shook with her stifled weeping, until at last her final sob expired in a long, spent sigh. She got up and went to the bathroom for a drink of water. From the full-length mirror an ugly face with swollen eyes and dry, puffed lips stared out. It was incredible that a person’s face could turn into anything so queer and strange.

  I suppose, she told it, someday I will look back at all this and wonder how I got through. I suppose I will get through, but I don’t know how.

  And the pain came shooting, subsiding, and shooting back. She lay down again on the bed, counting time between the throes of that small, hot pain.

  The sun, moving west, had left dusk at the far end of the room, dusk creeping toward her across the ceiling. Somebody would be coming soon, most probably Dad, since Emmabrown would be going home. And like one floating, willing to go wherever the current should direct, she waited.

  Presently, she heard the heavy footsteps in the hall and the knock at the door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The moment she saw him, she sensed that something was wrong. He came in and sat down on the edge of the bed. And his hand found hers and held it. For a while neither spoke.

  “That doctor telephoned,” he said, looking over her toward the darkening window.

  “How did he—” she began.

  “From your book bag.” He was still not looking at her. “Was it Ted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aaahhh.” The sound was so harsh, so terrible, that she flinched. Now would come the reproaches and the blame. Now.

  But instead, his hand tightened on hers, while the other hand went to her forehead to stroke her tumbled hair.

  “I’ve spoken to Mama,” he said quietly. “She will be here tomorrow.”

  And he sat there beside her, not speaking, just smoothing and smoothing her hair.

  * * *

  This could be the first circle of hell, Bill thought. His brother was as flushed as if his blood pressure had doubled, while Claudia, except for her reddened eyes, was ghastly. Elena, unable to be still, kept rising and sitting, moving from one chair to the next, clacking her heels as she walked the bare floor between the rugs. She had objected violently to the presence of Claudia and Cliff, but Bill had overruled her.

  “They’re frantic. They, especially Claudia, are as much involved in this madness as we are.”

  A furious small figure, Elena stood now in the window’s bay, sparking and about to explode again in a tearful rage for the third time today.

  “It’s an outrage. You can’t let an innocent child out of your sight for five minutes without—without—”

  Bill gave her an expressive look. A fine one to talk, she was. Five minutes. More like months, wasn’t it?

  “If Ted did this—” cried Claudia, “my God, what can I say? I am so ashamed!”

  “ ‘If’ he did this?” Elena screamed. “What do you mean ‘if’? My little girl upstairs, my poor, sick, terrified baby, who’s been in her bed since yesterday afternoon, isn’t hallucinating, you know. She isn’t lying either. Does she look like a party girl or the town tramp? She doesn’t even know any boys! How do you people think this happened to her? How does your son think it happened?”

  “What Ted thinks doesn’t matter,” Bill interjected.

  Claudia said weakly, “We called him in right after you gave us the news this morning, and he was absolutely shocked.”

  “I can imagine,” Bill said. “Look. Charlotte described the entire thing. You had baked a chocolate cake. He gave her wine, red wine, she said. He—” The words choked him.

  Claudia’s head went down on her clasped hands, and Cliff moved closer to her.

  “I think Ted should come here and face you,” Cliff said. “I can call him at his friend’s house right now.”

  “Yes,” agreed Elena, “you do that. Bring him here so I can get my hands on him. I want to kill him the way you kill a wild rat.”

  Bill shook his head. “No. I can’t look at him. No. To sit in the same room with him would be unbearable. He would defile this house. No,” he repeated.

  “What is to be done, then,” Cliff said reasonably, “is what we really should be discussing. Obviously, the first thing is to take care of Charlotte—”

  “We’ll take care of her,” Elena said fiercely.

  “Of course,” Cliff said. “But I am talking about the other side.” And then, ignoring Elena, he asked painfully, “Do you want to bring charges against Ted, Bill?”

  When Claudia gasped, he put his arm around her again, saying still in that painfully reasonable manner, “We have to face reality. If Ted is guilty, and it certainly seems that he is, why, then …” He did not finish.

  Claudia raised a tortured face from her hands. “What do you mean? What will happen?”

  “He’s over eighteen, adult enough to vote and to serve in the army. Adult enough to take his punishment. All this is not your responsibility, Claudia, although knowing you as I do, I know you feel that it is.”

  Claudia sprang up. “All I want, all I ask, is to see Charlotte. I want to tell her—I don’t know what. I just want to see her. We were—for a little while we were friends.”

  “Absolutely not!” Elena objected. “She’s in no condition to see you.”

  “I’m afraid Elena’s right,” Bill said. “But as to the other business about pressing charges, I don’t see what good is to be gained by hauling Ted into court. I think you should immediately take him for some serious counseling. Nip this in the bud before something else happens.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Elena cried. “He’s to get away with this? No punishment? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I don’t think I am. Consider what it would mean to Charlotte to be questioned, first by the police and then by lawyers. The courts would require Ted to have a defense. And do you think that the news, that Charlotte’s name, wouldn’t leak out? It’s all a huge bag of worms. No, this has to be kept quiet. It has to,” Bill declared.

  For a moment no one spoke. The weight of accumulated fears was smothering them all.

  “He’ll be going away to college in the fall,” Cliff said, meaning, Bill now understood as his eyes met his brother’s, I will keep him out of sight. Don’t you worry.

&nb
sp; “No,” Bill answered, “that’s not enough. I want him away from here right now. No waiting for college.”

  “Whatever you think best,” Claudia said hastily. “Oh, my God, I think I’m dreaming this horror.”

  “Where can we send him?” Cliff asked.

  “Some summer program. A lot of schools have them.”

  “Try a reform school,” Elena said.

  “Take any school you can find,” Bill said. “The farther away the better.”

  Cliff, looking sad and solemn, gave assurance. “Will do.”

  They were moving toward the front door, when Bill, equally sad and solemn, added, “This calamity must not spoil our relationship. Each of us has a problem to deal with, and we need to support, not confront, each other.”

  When he had closed the door behind them, Elena turned upon him. “What’s wrong with you? You seem to think more of your brother and that monster, than you do of your own daughter. And that woman, the monster’s mother—”

  “She was crushed,” Bill said. “Didn’t you see? What do you want of her?”

  “Crushed. She deserves to be.”

  “That’s cruel and absurd, Elena, and you know it.”

  “ ‘If he did it,’ she says. Her precious boy! Claudia is a fool. She’s out of her mind. She ought to be locked up someplace.”

  Bill’s thoughts were not on Claudia; he flung them out now at Elena. “If you had been home where a mother should be, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “And if I had been, could I have watched her for every second?”

  He did not reply. Maybe he himself should have been more alert. It was on a Sunday, Charlotte had said, so very likely it was the Sunday when he had met with that Midwest group that was leasing the plant. Well, business had to go on if you wanted to pay your bills and eat, didn’t it? he demanded angrily. But I didn’t like him. I should have been more firm with Charlotte, should have said: I forbid you under pain of—of what? That was not his style. He had always been gentle with his gentle child, a sheltered child, perhaps too sheltered. And maybe she hadn’t been taught well enough. The wine … She hadn’t known how fast it can work. His mind ran from one thought to another. Her flighty mother. Flighty? Impossible. That man in Florida. Damn. Talk about life’s injustice. That poor child upstairs. What are we going to do?